Sex and skin -- get close to your choices

[Carole Franizzi]

 

Venus: SL allows any resident to choose a gender and skin color.  If one makes more than one avatar, one can craft all sorts of combinations.  For the purposes of this OP, I am interested in your original choices.  You can, of course, diverge from that if you like.

C.F.: Oh, gawd, another of those bloody uni students expecting us to do their thesis for them…

Oops. It’s you, Venus… *waves and smiles sweetly*

 

Venus.: When you first rezzed, how did you decided upon the gender of your avatar?  How did you decide the skin tone/color?

C.F.: Well, call me unimaginative (yells from sidelines “Unimaginative!!!”), but it never dawned on me to make a male avatar. I assumed I “had to” be as much like myself as possible. Hence my very first finalised version had my own hair, skin and eye colouring, though was miles younger and quite perfectly beautiful.

 

Venus: How did you make your choices?  Did you switch somewhere along the line by choosing either the other gender or a radically different skin tone/color (and why)?

C.F.: Yes, I did. It suddenly dawned on me that I had no reason to stick with being a white female, and so I have been variously female, male and something in between, white, black, Chinese, Japanese and Latina, young, old, pretty, ugly, thin and fat. Why? Well, why not? Where else will I get the chance of living in another’s skin? The conclusion of my experiments is as follows – age, ethnic origin, physical type and level of beauty, in no way affect my sense of “me”. Using a different gender does. Skin colour really is just “skin deep” – gender identity is a far, far deeper thing altogether.

 

Venus: Do you wonder what it would be like to operate an avatar of another gender?  Take on an ethnicity that is different from what you started with?  What would stop you from trying something different?

C.F.: Well, unless somebody brings out an hermaphrodite Eskimo skin, I think my experiments have reached their natural end and I don’t have any wondering left to do. Carole is permanently white, whereas my other accounts are permanently Asian and Latina. They’re all me.

 

Venus: Discuss.

C.F.: Yes, ma’am. Oh wait, I already have. Now do your own bloody homework.

[Ceka Cianci]

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Venus Petrov wrote:

Wander away, Ceka.  It is fun to remember how we all started out.

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ok hehehe you asked for it!! lol

seriously though..i think the best times in sl are when we had the most questions about it..

my first house was my best house..because i didn't even know that i could ever make a house..i thought they just came from the house store LOL

 

and clothes..omg..when i met my first designer..i think it was the owner of nomine..i think her name was sunflower something or flower something..i can't remember..but it was like meeting some star or celebrity..and wow they are talking to me like just a normal person..

i had to go and brag to everyone back at the house about that one lol

all the little things were such big deals ..like wow look at all these boxes coming from everywhere!!

this was when there was a grid wide attack..me and one of my roomies were there trying to figure out where they were coming from..

is it sposed to be something like a snow storm but a box storm? hey maybe there is stuff in all those boxes..or maybe we can shoot them..

my friend say's..i think they are just prims..

i was like..what the heck is a prim?!

i think they just enjoyed how much i didn't know lol because they sure seemed to pick up on the world fast..i just kind of went real slow through it just enjoying how neat it was everywhere..

and when i started my first job which was for GOL..that was like two weeks after i came to sl..they had two sims and this roman looking club..

it was huge..they hadn't even opened yet..i think there was only like 6 dancers there at the time..me and the other two of my roomies..then some others we met while we were there..

i didn't know anything about dancing..just that you got on the pose balls and they made you dance..i didn't know anything about erotic dancing..i think it was probably a week or before someone finally told me that i was sposed to be taking thigns off when someone tipped me LOL

i worked there for like two years or so..

it was like 30 days after we opend that everyone was getting all excited and shouting in chat..yay #1 on the popular list..

i was like Yay!! because i didn't want to not be excited also..but then had to ask..what the heck is the popular list?

they just said that we became #1

i was like omg!!! 0.0

i was really proud ..because there were only about 12 of us dancers and just one dj..oh what was his name..Mount morgan i think..he had the best voice and just sounded like he came right off of one of those top 40's stations..

he always did two events back to back..one with some different theme..then the one that came right after was always a nude event lol

so two in the morning and two at night and it was always packed with people..

i kind of became a workoholic and shopper..

i was making probably 40 to 60k a day ..just dancing and i would still end up buying lindens  after i would go shopping..

then the money just kept getting better and better and it just became about the club..

then the growing up really started and the learning more and more about SL..

after a couple of years it had gotten to where i started to really see sl as a platform rather than another world..thats when the immersion really started to slip away..

now it's almost impossible to slip into getting that caught up in something..

 

i really do miss being immersed like that..my first house felt like a home..the one i have now just feels like a place to drop prims while i'm listening to good music..

since there really is nothing else like SL..it's hard to ever get immersed into anything virtual now unless it's a movie or a music video..

but i'm sure something will come along..it always does..hehehe

 

 

 

[Kelli May]

For my first account I chose the male cyberpunk avatar, back in 2006 when that meant non-prim hair, non-textured skin and pre-dating sculpties and glow. As I remember it, that av had deathly pale skin. I think I chose it because I'd been RPing a male character in a cyberpunk setting around that time. Being male by birth and with very little experience of being female back then, I wanted to get the feel of the world before I tried anything else.

In truth, I came to SL to try being female and it wasn't long before I created female avs. In fact, I played around with dozens of avatar shapes in those early days... hulking male monsters, winged fae women, goths, vamps, furries, orcs, lions and tigers and bears (oh my!). Within a week or so I'd settled on a leggy, punky, female avatar which remained my default for my formative months in SL. I've been female ever since. Apart from the odd flirtation with a Japanese look, my human avs have always been light-skinned, usually without a deep tan (I usually pick the 'sun-kissed' skins from a given range, or lighter). That's more or less my skin colour in RL. I chop and change hair colours; for a long time I was dark-haired, then a redhead. The past couple of years I've mostly been blonde, whereas in RL I'm dark-haired. My av is also approximately my RL height, which makes me short by SL standards but tall in RL.

[Maitimo]

My gender and ethnicity is the same in SL as in RL. I don't have any desire to be anything different. I think it would be too much like roleplaying if I tried.

[Conifer Dada]

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Sy Beck wrote:

I still don't understand why people buy body shapes.  It's one of the most simplest things you can do for yourself, if a bit time consuming, but you can soon build up a whole library of shapes for your avatar.

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Nor do I, but then probably some people find making a nice shape more difficult than others do.  Also, I suppose if someone sees the perfect shape for them for sale at L$ 100, it might be worth the money rather than messing about with the sliders for an hour or two.

[Griffin Ceawlin]

My very first avie was a white female. Why female? No idea, really. I was just checking it out, not sure if I was going to spend any time in SL or not. So, why not female? The very next day, though, Griffin was born, and Morgana rezzed once or twice after that and was soon killed off altogether.

Griffin has always been some shade of white. I don't know that Griffin would ever take on a different ethnicity. Griffin is a representation and extension of the boring white RL me.

I have several TE alts, all of which are also white. I do have a female one, and while I did have fun shopping for and fitting her in skins, hair and couture dresses, she rarely makes an appearance these days.

[Venus Petrov]

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Griffin Ceawlin wrote:

I have several TE alts

, all of which are also white. I do have a female one, and while I did have fun shopping for and fitting her in skins, hair and couture dresses, she rarely makes an appearance these days.

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Excuse my ignorance.  What are TE alts?

[Void Singer]

TE = Tiny Empires... it's a turn based social hud game based on feudal europe...it was all the rage back in the day, and there are still thousands of players. alts are used to hold blocks of land by some

[Venus Petrov]

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Void Singer wrote:

TE = Tiny Empires... it's a turn based social hud game based on feudal europe...it was all the rage back in the day, and there are still thousands of players. alts are used to hold blocks of land by some

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Thank you Void. I am familiar with Tiny Empires as a concept but not the abbreviation.