Beauty and the Masses
There was a post on the feeds today about shapes and beauty and avatars -- complete with photos. If you peruse, you probably saw it. To be fair it was written in a questioning manner and not as an outright attack. If the lady in the photos sees the post however, I doubt she will take it lightly. It reminded me of some nasty history here in virtual land, and in this holiday season especially I encourage us to embrace all shapes and sizes as well as race, color and creeds.
In the distant centuries past and still in some cultures, Big Beautiful Women have been queen (sometimes literally). In the Roaring 20s women bound their breasts to look good in their flapper garb. Twiggy became "The Face of '66" and a fashion icon with a starving waif look.
At Phil's Place we can be whatever we want to be, look however we want to look and some folks don't deal well with the concept of individuality. I have seen attacks on fat women, anorexic women and old women. There was even one prominent blogger that was repeatedly advised to make her shape look better when in fact, she was doing her best to represent her RL self. [insert sigh here]
In a world where we can all look like models, why do some folks feel the need to do their own thing?
Maybe they consider conformity a greater enemy than "ugliness" in the eyes of others.
In the distant centuries past and still in some cultures, Big Beautiful Women have been queen (sometimes literally). In the Roaring 20s women bound their breasts to look good in their flapper garb. Twiggy became "The Face of '66" and a fashion icon with a starving waif look.
At Phil's Place we can be whatever we want to be, look however we want to look and some folks don't deal well with the concept of individuality. I have seen attacks on fat women, anorexic women and old women. There was even one prominent blogger that was repeatedly advised to make her shape look better when in fact, she was doing her best to represent her RL self. [insert sigh here]
In a world where we can all look like models, why do some folks feel the need to do their own thing?
Maybe they consider conformity a greater enemy than "ugliness" in the eyes of others.
Comments
There there are a lot of social and psychological concepts at work in the whole conforming versus different debate in the realm of appearance. The avatars we create and see are influenced by what we believe is acceptable (whether we go against it or not), which subsequently provides a message about us and the society we live in. Furthermore, it can perpetuate or work against appearance ideals. Because of this, unless it is made clear that the avatar is to bring awareness to the issue - as has been done by at least one fashion show - I am opposed to severely anorexic or obese avatars i much the same way I am opposed to pro-ana websites.
Of course, there's also the matter that our avatars are a product of how well we can manipulate the sliders or buy a shape. With poor hardware and/or low funds, sometimes you get what you get. Admittedly, my avatar's face looked fairly manly the first few months I was in SL because I had a horrible laptop and basic knowledge of the appearance system.
I was really uncomfortable and questioned for nearly 2 days whether to have those photo's accompany my comments. I didn't even look at the avi's name so for all I know she could be a SL identity known to many or a new resident of only days. But in the end I reasoned that I was not referring to the body type of a real person and that this particular avi was beautiful in my eyes from a distance and then upon closer inspection had facial features that were incongruous toward her overall look. The RL person behind this avi is totally unknown to me - I was offering an example of that person's concept of avatar creation.
What I was trying to convey (perhaps in a way not seen as fair) was how varied the idea of beauty is.
I do sincerely apologize for including an image of an unknown avatar that was interesting to me but am not the first to do this. As we know there are blogs dedicated to this. I figure that tomorrow she may wear a tiny shape or a nekko shape or even another human shape. The RL person behind the av is not defined by the look I saw in Maitreya...it was just her collection of slider numbers that got me thinking.
Thanks for the right of reply :-))