by Amy Mueller, Guest Writer
Location: Apollo Garden

From Ignatius: Amy is one of my students who completed a project to explore educational and social spaces in Second Life.  Part one of her two-part series follows.

It wasn’t until I began talking to people in the SL world that I started to understand why and how individuals could become so wrapped up in this virtual reality.  In my third visit in-world I was feeling adventurous and decided to land on a random island that looked interesting from above.  Here I talked to a woman named Elfheart.  I introduced myself and told her about my report on SL.

I asked her why she enjoys SL so much and she told me that she believed that SL is a place where individuals can creatively blossom.  She called SL a playground for adults. SL is an alternative to online war games and it attracts a different type of user, including people like Elfheart, who want a place where they can converse with others and express themselves.  Elfheart brought up the point that SL attracts more women than men.  I asked her why she believed this was true and she told me that in real life women are often judged based on their appearance and their age.  In SL women are able to control both what they look like and how old they appear.  This affects the respect they are given. 

I couldn’t help but think about the women that I saw in SL.  Elfheart was right, women in SL are able to control what they look like, and it seems to me that most of them chose to be very attractive, thin, scantily clad, young women. The “fairy-woman” meditating at the Apollo Garden in my snapshot is practically nude!

Although I can see the temptation to beautify oneself in SL, I realized and this assimilation only perpetuates real-life prejudices.  I found it to be contradictory that many women complain about the sexism that results in real like based on women’s appearance, but in SL they give in to this by making themselves more sexually appealing.  I think there’s something wrong with the fact that you can rate an avatar’s appearance.  Is this what SL is all about?  (to be continued. . .)

Well, I were a perfeck 10 in reel life, so why mess wif sich a manly feller’s ‘pearance?  So naturully I bekum a 10 in Secund Life.  Tho I don’t hold no candles beside Miz Di or Miz Kyo—they am hot enuf as it are.

Well, back tu drinkin’ n’ ritin’ my next collum fo’ Mistopher Ignoramus

Oh come on - of COURSE we all want to be young, thin and gorgeous. Why come into a “world” where you can make yourself a perfect 10, then choose to be a 4? Maybe those of you who have already experienced perfection in RL want to see how the ohter half lives - well go for it! As for me - I choose to be a 10 and I enjoy the attention it gets me - positive and negative. I can choose to ignore someone, talk to them, or tell them off it they deserve it. I would never in RL do or say some of the things I do in SL. There is freedom behind the anonymonity of the avatar, and I like it…

I personally don’t attractive-ness myself..

I like to model myself after well.. myself…
Short, and apparently cute with very big boots and maybe a hat.

Hey there!  Very insightful and you seem very clear about what your observations showed you in SL.

As an amateur borg-sociologist, I often look for patterns in behavior of avatars in SL in order to understand universal traits about humanity.  I hope you will do a profile on people who own and run sims and how they act the same or differently when in “power”.

Looking forward to your next section.

Cecil the borg

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