Ethnicity & Avatars

Chip Midnight has awesome ethnic skins My good friend Brody has one from there and he looks so sexy!!!!! He is the hottest ever


Allysa
=^.^=

This is all a bit ironic, as my friend and I signed up via the CSI gateway last spring, and the only decent avs offered were Asian. I had to go to Orientation Island on Mainland to change mine before customizing.

I've seen a lot of ethnic humans represented in Second Life. Not so many African Americans though.

Then again we can't tell how many of any genuine ethnicity are running around in fur or as aliens etc along with everyone else rather than being any type of human.

Personally I have few darker skin avatars and my rl partner who joined SL is a Black American, he doesn't like the term African American personally.
Some people I have talk to about this think you should only have the avatar of your own skin color. I don't particularly get it myself.
Yet on just pure design and business aspect of making skins it whole lot harder to make skins, even harder to do realistic or good look darker skin avatars and their is obviously less of demand for these skins or there would be more of them.
I don't know I think from personal experience in SL racism doesn't stay in first life when you login, and if your concept of beauty doesn't involve those of darker skin tone you're not going to seek that out here.
Even the black gay male avatars I have met will change their skin to white skins if it will get them laid. I have seen it.
I have also heard very subtle racist things when I brought my partner to gay sex places, i.e like this guy who kept going on about "how the place was too dark" and I suggested he change his lighting settings, he said he wasn't referring to darkness in that way.
This man had very Asian sounding last name.
Being Asian or Caucasian seems more acceptable then brown or black skin even here because people are still racist or subconscious internalized racism with them even here.
Same thing goes with gender and sexuality too here.
Also not everyone here is middle class with good equipment and lot of money to spend here either.

I've had the unfortunate run-ins with such people. There is nothing that will initiate a series of retaliations, verbal and otherwise if I can get away with them, than simple bold-faced bigotry. I've only had the pleasure of orbiting a jerk once for it, but I've AR'd plenty. There should be zero-tolerance for that nonsense in RL, let alone SL.

Heh, I thought that was the only one I disliked, the asian CSI one. heh. different opinions and all. heh

Is Zombie an Ethnicity now?

Shouldn't be. I mean, everyone is that shade of gray until things res properly.

Decent black male skins:

Saladin at Adam n Eve
Male 3, Rook, Crow, and Raven at CMFF
Ebony at The Body Politik
Handsome 8, Finest 8 at Made Men
the skins at Ebony & Ivory

Those are what I've found so far... anyone else got any good tips?

My look tends towards East Indian and I'm comfy with that. I see lots of Asians and mixed ethnicities in my travels. Add Elves, Vampires, Furries, Nekos, Fairies and misc and SL is pretty multi-cultural.

My first SL av was in mid 2005 & I have noticed the number of non-Caucasian avs went down a lot since then.

My 1st av was Black, my 2nd av was Black (I wanted a name change), THIS av is Black (another name change...yeah I'm fickle), and so am I in RL.

There used ta' be a LOT of Black avs (in certain Sims) before, the number dropped off hardcore sometime...maybe early last year. I think a lil' while after I started seein' more Voice chat used all over the Grid, a lotta the "Black people" (at least the ones I knew about or saw) vanished.

In response to your question...I HAVE NO IDEA why there ain't more people "of colour" on the Grid. It bugged me early on, but it don't bother me at all now, & hasn't for a few years.

I have gone on "recruiting drives" tryna get more Black folks into SL, but I could only get 2, and one left after a few weeks. This is even including a message board of hundreds, that I was one of 3 active Moderators on.

Who knows?

*throws hands up in confusion*

[EDIT]:



Hmm...you got a point...percentage-wise, I have known a lot less Black folks than White folks w/ computers at home. Maybe when this "metaverse" thing goes more mainstream the population will look more diverse. Almost all the Black folks I know would rather watch MTV, play sports, or smoke weed & party (NOT THAT WE *ALL* DO THAT), than spend time on somethin' like SL.

My avatar is white, I'm white, so white is comfortable. But at the same time, I don't think of him as being Caucasian, white, Norwegian, German, Irish he is just what he is and in the end his color doesn't matter because it isn't tied to anything.

I hope so.

I don’t see anything racist in discussing the subject.

I could ask how come no one looks over 25 in SL, would I be called ageist

I have a nightmare that This thread will be over 25 and people will still bump it.

Hell, I hope not!

Well at the rate we are going ...

In about a week it will be a Year old.

I do not know if anyone has mentioned the Scorpio Orion Series from the Abyss but that has to be one of the best male skins Ive seen.

Crickey, I hadn't noticed it was that old LOL

The eerie part is some of the recent posters pretty much echoed what they had said the first time.

Was like a time-warp.

I would love to see more older avatars, more homosexuality and multi-gender people that doesn't involve the female or shemale stereotypical , more men then women here too but I doubt that is going to happen for same reason their isn't as many people of color here.

I'd be more concerned with people who want to play homosexual/trans avatars and don't feel they freely can ... it's not a question of having "more", its a question of all the folks who wish to do so being comfortable enough to be able to.

As for older avatars ... I like to think my guy looks to be in his mid-thirties, perhaps 40. I don't think he looks twenty-somethign at all ... but hey, most folks want to portray an ava that represents the prime of life. While I'm kicking ass on my way to 50 ... there were some aspects of being 25 that were certainly more endearing.

The problem I see is that a lot of skins (actually all skins) have a muscular chest and abs painted on for men and large boobs and thin waist painted on for women. Making changes to your avatar such as a large waist or a small chest end up looking really weird. Faces are almost universally a thin model type of face. I'd love to have more plain jane and joe type of face and body but they just aren't out there. There's definitely been an explosion of skin makers and skins available but they end up looking mostly the same.

Agreed. I have a female alt who is slim figured with a roundish face, and I have had a lousy time finding really good skins that look pleasing on her. It's almost as if the big artists think every woman out there has big boobs and a triangular face. :/

wow, and I thought I was just having some serious deja vu But it's rather interesting to see what's come out in the last year. Chip Midnight's male skins are deadly sexy, being a somewhat scrawney Irish/german/slovakian mut in the Pacific Northwest (USA) I am about as far from a bbw as one can get, but my favorite and (I think) most sexy shape and skin are precisely that. Skin Within makes gorgous ethnic skins for women, and I've seen a lot of other people post other skin makers who do ethnic skins as well. So, they're out there. I think the issue could be two fold. Firstly, even with the advent of windlight et al, so that we have a better viewer, it is very hard to see those wonderfully fine details that the skin makers work so hard on that diferentiate a mixed asian/caucasion skin, or italian skin from a tanned Cuacasion skin. The other thing is that, since I just started playing with making skins, I notice it is much much easier to make a simple light toned skin, but much harder to balance the colors of a truely dark/ethnic skin.