Body Image…Second Life…do you like your self?
On Thursday, March 20, 2008, Marissa Racecourse will be presenting a paper at the 2008 National Popular Culture & American Culture Associations Conference This event will be at the San Francisco Marriott (55 Fourth Street). Why do I mention this? Because the title of her presentation is “You Mean You Chose To Be Fat?: Body Image in a Virtual World”.
Essentially she had some people in Second Life run around as fatvatars. Here’s a picture from my time as a fatvatar (click to enlarge):
I had to wear a fatvatar for a week (I think I did an extra week for Marissa) and go do various things and record my observations. I made friends and also got some surprisingly strange comments. It always shocks me when someone calls another person a ‘fat ass’ in Second Life. To me, the diversity that is here is what makes this place so awesome! My avatar is not as fat as my fatvatar but my normal avatar is 5 feet tall and probably would be a size 12/14 if SL had sizes and I have gotten strangers to call me ‘fat ass’ or ‘ageplayer’.
Obviously body image is pretty important to some people – even in a virtual world! I have pride in my short/fatty av and I think she’s positively gorgeous. Of course, she’s modeled after my real life self- although I don’t think I’ve ever said that my real self is ever ‘positively gorgeous’ (ok maybe I did before prom or sometime in my youth). On a strange train of thought- I suppose Kesseret has made me accept Christine a bit more as they are very similar physically and one in the same mentally. Maybe others who did this came to that conclusion as well? I guess I’ll have to wait on Marissa for that. (HURRY UP MAR!!!!<3)
I know Marissa will be posting her paper on her website (marissaracecourse.com) as she has other papers there too. I hope if anyone is interested and they are in the SF area to go see the presentation.
If anyone has anything to say about body image in Second Life or anything else- feel free to leave a comment.
[...] told me they were entering the Glam SL Casting for the next issue. I even heard a few of my “chunkier” SL friends applied – but you know they won’t get in. SL models are all tall and leggy. [...]
February 18th, 2008 at 3:54 am
[...] that would be. In the meantime, I look forward to the essay I heard about via KessKreations’ post that Shopping Cart Disco linked to. Otherwise slim SLers running around in “fatvatars” [...]
February 18th, 2008 at 7:21 am
My husband and I actually made avatars of our real life selves in SL for fun last winter and got some strange reactions too. My female friends (who number few) freaked out when they first saw us and one I think inadvertently made a mean comment before she found out what they were. I’m less overweight than he is, but we’re both a far cry from the typical beautiful SL model look. My guy friends either didn’t care or had enough tact not to even comment on the look. Going out in public, surprisingly no one said a word about my avatar, but we had two girls out-and-out pick on my husband. One of them called names and started telling me I ought to make him lose weight and that she’d be ashamed to be with such a fatass. The other kept kicking him around the store we were at and laughing at him. Regardless of whether it’s an avatar created after our real life selves or not, if you are in a world where you can look any way you want, why do some people feel the need to tell you that the way you look is wrong? It is a strange world. On another note, finding clothes in SL that fit on a fat girl? Not so hard. On a guy? Imfreakingpossible. I don’t know if the mesh is just weird, but the way the textures stretched over the body was just absolutely terrible.
February 18th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Maegen- I think that was one of the male’s biggest complaints and also part of Marissa’s paper- clothing and how it fits. Our avatar mesh is yuck.
February 19th, 2008 at 12:18 am