What's wrong with being a realistic size?

[MoiselleErin Teardrop]

My avatar is built like a plus size lady. The sliders that effect height are set somewhere around 50 I think. I have no clue how tall she is.

 

[Suspiria Finucane]

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PaschaDmitriy wrote:

 and why does hardly anyone or even creators make or use realistic size avatars?

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Your world, your imagination. It should make no difference what size avatar you or anyone else has. As to the quoted text, search is your friend.

[Jade Nova]

Honestly I think being a bit shorter looks much more realistic than being insanely tall. I haven't seen any tall or "normal" -height avatars that didn't look stretched out and awkward. I am a bit short in SL but it doesn't bother me. Forgive me for being too confident if I am, but I think my avatars shape and height proportions look more realistic and much nicer than most people I encounter. I know that's purely opinion of course, not stating it as fact.

And I know there used to not be the height listed, I remember someone made a height prim once that was scripted to tell you your avatars height when clicked on. But even that was a year or so after I joined in 2008. Back then my avatar was probably about 4 feet tall LOL. I got mistaken for a child avatar all the time and I didn't even realize I was that small until someone pointed it out to me. Now although my avatar is much taller, she's still considered "short" but to me is a much nicer look than being stretched and skewed to 7-8 feet tall. 

As much as I would like to just keep her at 5'5" to represent me irl, I know that's too short so I have to bend a little and bring her up to about 6ft. But I don't think I"ll ever make her any taller than that. I don't want to be Amazonian. ;o

[KaelemDajuan]

I totally agree about looking better when your avi is smaller, and i have a funny story to tell, when i first created my av i didnt think about its actual height, i did want a smaller av yes, but i didnt actually know how tall i was, so i made my av the size i thought looked ok, but i thought i was like about 5'4 my rl height, well shock happened when i was walking across an empty land and i came across a nice friendly man, i felt so silly, he was towering over me i was only waist high on him, and instantly i thought my goodness how short did i make my avatar, so when i went to a freebie place that had a height detector i measured my av and it said i was a tiny 4ft 11 :smileyvery-happy: 

[Penny Patton]

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KaelemDajuan wrote:

I totally agree about looking better when your avi is smaller, and i have a funny story to tell, when i first created my av i didnt think about its actual height, i did want a smaller av yes, but i didnt actually know how tall i was, so i made my av the size i thought looked ok, but i thought i was like about 5'4 my rl height, well shock happened when i was walking across an empty land and i came across a nice friendly man, i felt so silly, he was towering over me i was only waist high on him, and instantly i thought my goodness how short did i make my avatar, so when i went to a freebie place that had a height detector i measured my av and it said i was a tiny 4ft 11 :smileyvery-happy: 

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But you might not have been 4'11". One of the confusing things about SL is that the feature originally designed to tell avatar height, AgentSize, is actually broken. Any height detectors that use it alone are going to give you a height about 6-7 inches shorter than you actually are (in which case you'd have actually been about 5'6"). Even the height displayed in the official viewer is wrong, with Linden Lab stating they are aware of the issue and will fix it "eventually". Several of the more popular TPVs correct this.

The only 100% accurate way to know your height right now is to hop on a pose stand, take off your hair and shoes, then stretch a prim from the bottom of your feet to the top of your skull. The size of the prim is the size of your avatar in metres.

[KaelemDajuan]

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Penny Patton wrote:

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KaelemDajuan wrote:

I totally agree about looking better when your avi is smaller, and i have a funny story to tell, when i first created my av i didnt think about its actual height, i did want a smaller av yes, but i didnt actually know how tall i was, so i made my av the size i thought looked ok, but i thought i was like about 5'4 my rl height, well shock happened when i was walking across an empty land and i came across a nice friendly man, i felt so silly, he was towering over me i was only waist high on him, and instantly i thought my goodness how short did i make my avatar, so when i went to a freebie place that had a height detector i measured my av and it said i was a tiny 4ft 11 :smileyvery-happy: 

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But you might not have been 4'11". One of the confusing things about SL is that the feature originally designed to tell avatar height, AgentSize, is actually broken. Any height detectors that use it alone are going to give you a height about 6-7 inches shorter than you actually are (in which case you'd have actually been about 5'6"). Even the height displayed in the official viewer is wrong, with Linden Lab stating they are aware of the issue and will fix it "eventually". Several of the more popular TPVs correct this.

The only 100% accurate way to know your height right now is to hop on a pose stand, take off your hair and shoes, then stretch a prim from the bottom of your feet to the top of your skull. The size of the prim is the size of your avatar in metres.

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I had gathered several different free height detectors since using the one at the freebie store, they all told me a different height, and all said they were the most accurate, but you definitely can't go wrong using a prim as a measure, so that's what i've done with mine. I had tried making my av my RL height 5'4, but it made me look just a bit too small, so i increased it several more inches, which still looks small in comparison to the giant sized 7ft-8ft avs but where i hang out now most male avs aren't so giant, so i'm completely happy with it now  :smileyhappy:

[ElysiaJacquelle]

There is nothing wrong with being a realistic size, its all about personal choice and i dont get harassed at all for it, only my partner Pascha does unfortunately, being short and female no one gives you grief for, it only seems to happen if you're short and male. My avatar is 5'4" the same as my RL height but i am usually wearing heels in SL so that gives me a few more inches. Pascha and I are about the same size in SL, so that works out just right for us especially with poseballs, I did once try some poseballs with a 7ft+ male friend and we just looked so silly especially with the couple dancing animations. 

[Penny Patton]

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ElysiaJacquelle wrote:

i dont get harassed at all for it, only my partner Pascha does unfortunately, being short and female no one gives you grief for, it only seems to happen if you're short and male.

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This is a more recent thing.

When I first joined SL in 2005 my avatar was 6'1" and I would get comments about how "short I was". Even had a few people tell me they were uncomfortable with how small my avatar was.

A few years ago, 2007-2011, my avatar was already down to 5'7" or 5'10" depending on the look I was going for. Especially early on, when I first reduced my height down to 5'10" in 2007, I got harassed a lot. A fair number of adult sims and even some moderate/general sims had "security orbs" which would boot avatars who were "too short" and 5'10" fell into that. Up until about 2011 there were still a lot of adult sims which had minimum height rules which insisted you be over 6' tall to enter (can you imagine getting your height measured to determine your age when heading to a club or a bar in real life?) There are still a small handful of adult sims that do this, but they've become a rare minority.

There's an old, old screenshot of someone in a green alien avatar at a nude beach in SL, being told he has to leave because he doesn't meet the height requirement. "Children are short", the reasoning goes. "Do I look like a child"? the alien retorts. In real life know a 12 year old who is 6' tall and a man in his 30's under 5' tall. The screenshot used to circulate around the internet as an example of why SL isn't worth anyone's time.

 Nowadays it's far more common to see women in realistic sizes. Take off their shoes and many women you see in SL are 5'3" to 6' tall. Your mileage may vary, of course. It's also still common to see 7' tall women, but it used to be unheard of to see a woman under 6'4".

 

With men, it's still super rare to see a male avatar under 7' tall. Almost unheard of (outside of RP sims like 1920's Berlin, of course). Meanwhile, 8' to 8'8" tall men are common. I've joked about insecurity in the past, but I really do believe there is a social pressure at work. Guys typically do not want to be the shortest man in the room, let alone the shortest person. With the introduction of rigged mesh avatars I'm seeing even larger male avatars, in the 10-11' range, and I'm talking human avatars!

 The other side of the coin is, depending on where you go shorter male avatars can be really popular.  Yeah, women like tall men, but in SL where being tall just means you have poor impulse control with regards to the height slider, shorter men give a more confident impression. Chances are, if you're in a sim with a lot of 5' to 5'10" tall women, they're not looking for 7-9' tall men.