My Second Life avatar dressed in a Holiday dress.
Virtual worlds that are not connected to a set game lore are rather amorphous at this point. Second life considerably so. Many users have created a fantasy world about themselves. In essence we become our own mythological creations. At this point in VR, the popular fantasy is to be some kind of superstar model persona.
As I stated before, many female avatars are impossibly tall, terrifyingly thin and very blond. A new foible has cropped up since I entered VR space and that is overly enlarged eyes with freakishly long eyelashes. I consider it all bone ass ugly but I am the minority opinion. In fact my avatar is far outside the norm in SL. My avatar is considered fat, short, and strange. A super model the av is not. And yet, I stubbornly cling to my illusion that my av is one of the most beautiful in SL. I can't speak with any authority about non-human avatars or even Nekos (sort of a half cat/half human hybrid). Mainly because that sort of avatar play doesn't attract me therefore I don't know the beauty foibles in that part of the VR subculture. Frankly Nekos just seem to me to be regular avatars with cat ears and a tail stuck on as an afterthought. Asian players seem to be attracted to the anime stylized avatars. They look like characters out of the photo-real games of Final Fantasy. Most often those avis are dressed in some form of the Gothic Lolita style.
Which is how my av ended up in the dress shown above. I love the silliness of the GL style but on my avatar it looks wrong. My av looks like a slightly psychotic Christmas strip-o-gram employee. More often than not I end up as a fashion failure in VR just like in RL. The fashion blogs for SL are interesting and I follow a few of them. But they don't help my general ineptness. Which means if I'm not looking like some crazy Baby Jane, I'm dressed in a lackluster GAP style. The only time I could claim to be well dressed is when I indulge in some kind of Victoriana. Victorian gowns are quite popular in SL and they are created as self contained outfits. So when my avi wears them she always looks put-together and stylish. Unlike the above example.
Truthfully, I think I would do well to pick one outfit and just stick to it. Then mistakes would be avoided. But then that wouldn't be fun, would it?Labels: avatars, commentary, culture, fashion, mmorpgs, second life, technology
