In SL, I can be anybody I want to be. And I choose... Wait! What?

850 words, 4-minute read

In SL, you can be anything you want. Vampire, Neko, furry, short, tall, big, small, male, female, animal, monster, alien, ad infinitum. Whatever your game or fantasy, whatever your kink or fetish, in this 3D modeling environment, the world is your oyster. Do it or be it, and have fun.

However, I, like many people, merely play myself. Okay, I joke that we all seem to be a good-looking, physically fit twentysomething which I suppose is some sort of idealized version of our RL self. I'm not saying I'm ugly and unfit in RL, but it would be a stretch to say my avatar is an exact duplicate of me. Despite my best efforts, I've found certain limitations to the SL technology, preventing me from a more accurate representation of my RL self.

I got to thinking. When I run across someone, that is, their avatar, am I seeing the best they can do based on their expertise in customizing an avatar? Or have they created their best representation of their RL self? Or have they created what they think is a desirable form of beauty?

In RL, few of us ever reach the upper echelons of what our society considers good-looking. None of us are going to be walking down the runway for Victoria's Secrets or Menswear Fashions. However, in SL, we can be whoever we want to be. And yet, I sometimes meet someone with what I think is an unusual avatar and wonder what motivated their choice. I have a picture gallery of people I've met and places I've visited over the years, and in amongst all this is a folder entitled Weird People with the strange of the strange. Hyper-muscular men, blow-up Barbie dolls, not just large but fat people, inordinately big or small, I've thought the owner decided to go for an over-the-top, exaggerated version of themselves or their own vision of desirability. Is it a cartoon version of themselves? Is it a charicature of their RL self? Instead of attractive, is ridiculous the goal? Then again, are some people attracted to the opposite of good-looking? Is ugly a fetish?

Aside: It is common to find a Pick in somebody's profile labelled Likes and Dislikes. I've seen several women write under their Dislikes: Men with cocks the size of my forearm. Holy cow! In this virtual fantasyland, I suppose any of us guys could be guilty of a little exaggeration (7 inches instead of 6) but a forearm? Whoa! Ha, ha!

BBW
BBW or Big Beautiful Women, a euphemism for — How to put this delicately? — the overweight. The other week, I was standing in a club, reading profiles when a woman hesitantly IMd me. She was a BBW and as we chatted, she revealed her avatar was meant to duplicate her RL self. She stressed she wasn't obese, but she was big. She also mentioned that she didn't get many IMs when standing around in clubs. It turned out she was a charming personality and an interesting character with a plethora of life experiences. How many of us lose out because we rely on our first impression?

This woman answered a question of mine. She was playing SL realistically. Her avatar was based on her RL; she had consciously decided to not be some fantasy version of what she might have thought how beauty was defined. She didn't want to be a Victoria Secrets model but wanted to be herself, including her imperfections.

A woman is a gift: The packaging may catch my eye, but it's the contents which keep me coming back.

I like a woman with big brains.

Years ago, a female friend on RL social media, ran a series of articles on women with photo shoots and their stories. Each woman talked about dealing with body image issues, not feeling beautiful and lacking self-confidence. For me, the surprise was that in each photo series, I saw an attractive woman. Okay, they weren't models; they weren't going to be on a Victoria Secrets runway, but they were attractive. I would have been delighted to take each one of them out on a dinner date to get to know them better. They were focusing strictly on their looks without considering all the other aspects which make us a complete package and hence, attractive.

It's not what you've got; it's what you do with it.

Confidence is the sexiest of all characteristics.

I don't believe anybody is truly ugly. Over the years, I've seen pictures of people badly disfigured in an accident or ravaged by disease and yet these people were still loved and even desired. But that's just the physical. Ugly can certainly come out with the personality. Some people, for whatever reason, just don't know how to be nice.

Final Word
The point of all this was my curiosity about how an individual arrives at their avatar. Are they lacking technical skills which leaves them with odd bodies? Or is this a deliberate attempt at doing something different, and is that different thing some sort of exaggerated version of what they consider attractive? I like to say that in SL, our only limitation is our imagination. Some people are pushing the boundaries.

References

My thanks to Manon Mirabeau for the picture of the two of us.

Wikipedia: Big Beautiful Women
"Big Beautiful Woman" (commonly abbreviated as BBW) is a euphemism for an overweight woman. The terms "Big Beautiful Women" and "BBW" were coined by Carole Shaw in 1979, when she launched BBW Magazine, a fashion and lifestyle magazine for "plus-size" women. BBW Magazine trademarked the term Big Beautiful Woman, which was later transferred to Dimensions Magazine.

I ran across the following article and this woman seems like an extraordinary personality.

xojane - Jan 9/2014 via Wayback Machine (wayback.archive.org)
I'm Fat, Forty And Single And I'm Having No Problems Getting Laid All The Time By Christine Whelan
I should note that when I tell you I'm fat, I really mean it. I'm not just slightly chubby and complaining about those last 15 pounds. I'm rather short and weigh almost precisely 300 lbs. I wear size 28 clothing. Unless you think such things are mutually exclusive, I would describe myself as reasonably pretty, in a natural, low-maintenance, naughty librarian kind of way. I am fiercely intelligent, deeply hilarious, casually stylish, utterly unselfconscious and really, genuinely nice. I am also an absolute riot in the sack. And I've been getting laid like crazy.

You must read the entire article. Ms. Whelan sounds like an amazing woman. And she's size 28. Confidence truly is sexy.

2023-12-01

Avatar Height

It is what it is until it's not. For years, I accepted whatever I bought; I didn't fiddle with it. I got an avatar and dressed it, but I didn't modify the various settings for height, weight, etc. I followed what I understood to be some sort of unofficial, unwritten rule:

SL = RL times 1.25
However, in the past few years, I've seen a trend: More and more people are making their avatars equal to their RL height which is leaving them looking short. In fact, I've seen a number of people defending their choice in their profiles by saying they're not short, others are too tall.

So, what's the right answer? And is there a right answer?

In RL, I'm six feet tall (1.8 meters). As I said, I've always used whatever avatar shape I bought without modifying it, but a number of years ago, I got some sort of height measuring device and found out I was close to seven feet (2.1 meters) high. Right? Wrong? Everybody else I hung around with was proportionally the same size, so nobody looked out of place. That extra height seemed perfectly normal.

Curious, I looked for an explanation and found this from the year 2011. It would seem this debate has been going on far longer than I first realized.

Avatars and objects in Second Life are larger than in real life, by default. There are two main reasons for this. The default visual perspective of the follow-camera is a couple meters behind and above the avatar's eyes, and this makes everything "look small" if it is scaled accurately. And the scripted command that is used by virtually every "Avatar Ruler" to report an avatar's height actually measures only to the height of their eyes. Add to this the fact that by adding prims and scripted attachments, some avatars may be as large as a full-grown dragon, and the end result is that most buildings, vehicles, and furniture in Second Life are scaled at 1.25 to 1.5 times the "Realistic" size. Most people simply accept this, after a while, since trying to make an "accurately sized" avatar gives you a form that is too small for most of the world around you.
-SL User Group, post by Ceera Murakami, Mar 10/2011

I note: an avatar's height actually measures only to the height of their eyes. True? False? Confirmation may be buried in the SL technical specs. The same poster talked of this years earlier.

Height detectors report the height of your eyes because the LSL code for the height detection is what is used to determine camera height in mouselook. Most people therefore set what they think is the height to the top of their head, and actually get 6 to 8 inches taller, to scale. If people adjust to what "seems right visually", it is even worse, which is why so many avatars average close to or even over 7 feet tall. Measuring yourself against a prim is the only accurate measuring method.-SL forum, post by Ceera Murakami, June 30/2007

In a posting from 2018, Wagner James (Hamlet Au) of the blog New World Notes, writes about this phenomenon from a sociological perspective Did Fragile Male Egos of Real Life Men Cause Second Life's Giant Crisis?

The trend toward incredibly tall avatars continues hurting the SL economy (bigger avatars need more virtual land, more virtual land costs more money per month), but why are avatars so huge in the first place? (For instance, pictured at right: Male Second Life avatar in the typical 7-8 foot range, next to a female avatar who is actually 5'7", i.e., on the taller side for women IRL.). But what keeps driving up avatar height? Reader "Pulsar" points out it could be a common culprit -- the fragile male ego.

Wagner James then refers to an earlier 2018 article Avatar Height, Hunter Walk, and How The Prisoner's Dilemma of User Choice Has Crippled the Second Life Economy in which he discusses how people may be trying to outdo one another. Person A is six foot five. Person B competes at six foot six. Person A revises their height to six foot seven. And so on. The problem further gets out of hand as this impacts what anyone can do with their land as bigger avatars mean bigger buildings which take up more land so one can only do less with their land.

I recently asked a friend about her own height, and she said the following:

My height is set for 2.03 metres...6.67 feet (roughly 80 inches) going by the 1.0 to 1.1 or 1.0 to 1.2 scale of SL, that translates to a height of 67 inches...which is my RL height

If I take my height, six feet (1.8 meters) or 72 inches, and multiply like my friend by 1.2, I get 86 inches or seven feet (2.1 meters). Seven feet may be large for RL (not for basketball!), but we return to the question of what is the correct height in SL.

Dancing
I occasionally like to ballroom dance — a nice way to chat. A number of times my partner has been smaller, sometimes significantly smaller, and I've noted that the positioning of the animations defers to my taller height. We're doing, let's say a waltz, and I have my left hand holding her right hand with my right hand around her waist. She is dancing off the floor, anywhere from one to two feet (1/3 to 2/3 meters).

Furniture
I sit with somebody on a chair or a couch. I appear to be sitting on the piece of furniture while my partner is hovering over the furniture, not touching it.

Default?
I can't help feeling the creator of the dance animations and the furniture have used my taller height as the default.

Adjust
Furniture makers seem to always include as adjust option to modify the position of one's avatar in respect to the furniture. A few times, I've tried to get my taller avatar to align with a smaller partner and end up with my avatar partially embedded in the furniture.

The Right Answer, at least my right answer
I have taken to adjusting the height of my avatar depending on who I'm with. If my partner follows the 1.25 rule, I make myself taller, maybe seven feet (2.1 meters). If my partner is smaller, corresponding to their RL height, I will make myself smaller, generally six feet (1.8 meters). I've been with people so small, I've adjusted my height to under six feet, such as five foot ten.

Child Avatars
Linden Labs has rules about child avatars being involved in anything sexual. They and even the citizens of SL are adamant about this. One club owner told me she would ban anybody short enough to be considered a child. Now, they said short enough without clarifying if other things, such as the maturity of the appearance would factor into their decision. Whether SL or RL, I know people who are short who are anything but a child, so height and height alone can't be the only criterium in determining a child.

Final Word
I suspect there are a number of factors contributing to the general rule of SL size = RL size times 1.25, both technical and possibly psychological. I also suspect the default visual perspective of the follow-camera over time made people eyeball their avatar and modify its height until they felt it looked right without ever doing more scientific measurements. Some things evolve organically, not with any deliberate intent. It is what it is. I will continue to adjust the height of my avatar according to whom I'm with. Elsewhere, I've explained I always use the Notes section of a profile to record information about the persona in question: date when we met, place where we met, particulars about our interaction, etc. I should start recording their height so as to know in advance how I should adjust my own height. Normally, I wouldn't care. If we're standing around or sitting apart chatting, it doesn't matter if we're in alignment or not. However, if we do interact, dancing, sitting together on furniture, etc., it would be nice to not have one person hovering or the other embedded. Ha! In RL, I have no problem kissing somebody on the lips. In SL, I seem to kiss everywhere but on the lips! Ha, again!


References

Second Life Wiki: Child Avatar - July 26, 2015
* What is a Child avatar?
* Why play a child in Second Life?
* What are Linden Lab's policies towards Child avatars?

2022-06-07