Insecurity, VR Style
I suspect that the way I've been feeling lately about Second Life has more to do with my own past insecurities and that's even more disturbing to me then ever having the insecurities to begin with.
It all started when I first joined and had the ability to control every part of my body's measurements, even down to how much cleavage and gravity I wanted my VR breasts to have. I chose a generic-looking type of avatar, stuck a blonde wig on her, dressed her in jeans, sandals and a nice top and I was good to go.
After every tenth or so male avatar leered at me when I was standing by my closest female friend in the game, who was also blonde, I decided some changes were in order. The reason for the leering was they thought we looked like sisters but it was a smarmy type of looking, not just an observation. They would say, "Oooooooooh, sisters! Yummy!!" as in "Oooooooh, sisters, let's have sex." I promptly changed my hair to dark red and that solved that. No one looks at my avatar now.
The feelings of insecurity started out insidiuously enough. I would be standing around with my friends, having a nice chat about world politics, gardening, graphics work, etc and suddenly one of the males standing about would coo, "Ooooh, Arabellamia (not her real name), what a lovely dress!" (Arabellamia dresses her avatar much better than I do mine, I simply don't have the time or patience to search through the 30,000 items in my inventory for something to pretty to wear. Another male will say, "Ooooh, nice hair, Arabellamia, what a pretty hairstyle and color!" Yet another will say, "I love that new standing animation you have, Arabellamia. So sweet, so cute. It's just adorable!! Where did you get it?" I usually stand there and wait for the accolades to finish so that we can go on chatting. I don't begrudge her the compliments, she deserves them. Her avatar looks very, very pretty and she has spent a lot of time and money making it look attractive.
What bothers me is I am suddenly thrown back to high school in which I would be standing around with a group of friends (ok, this happened in college, too) and the blonde, flirty, pretty girls would get all the attention and after a period of time, I would quietly fade into the background and just watch them operate in awe. I guess I should have picked up some pointers from them but I mostly remember thinking: "if I had to do that eye-batting, empty-flattery, hip-thrust-out-to-the-side-pouty-lip sort of thing just to get a boyfriend, I would rather go without." I distinctly remember accidentally ending up in a conversation with a very popular older jock type guy in the hallway during lunch and having him say to me, "Wow, you're so much fun. How come I never knew that about you?" He promptly asked me and my best friend, Juniper, to go driving around town with him and his friend that weekend, which we did. It soon became apparent, after the first 15 min., that "driving around town" meant a lot of kissing and things you don't want to do with someone you don't really know.
The one incident I remember in college is of sitting around my roommate's (now my sister-in-law) brother's apartment with all of his upperclassmen friends and watching our gorgeous friend, Chatty-Cathy, do the Batty-Eyed, pouty-lip, laugh-inanely thing on the other side of the room. It seemed to be working as she had all the men there swarming around her like bees to a honeypot (for lack of a cleverer idiom). I remember sitting on a ledge of some sort and my sister-in-law's brother, Thomas-the-Popular-Senior came to sit down beside me. I was greatly shocked because, although we had been friends for a while, I was sure he was interested in the vivacious, giggling girl across the room and wondered what he wanted.
"What are you looking at?" Thomas-The-Popular-Senior asked.
"Cathy. She's so pretty and fun. Everyone loves being around her," I didn't say it in a jealous way, I don't think. I don't remember being jealous of her, just resigned that I could never be like that.
"Yes, she is beautiful," he said, as he sipped on his coke.
"She makes everyone feel important," I sighed, "I wish I could be more like that, but I just don't know how."
Thomas-the-Popular said softly, so soft I wasn't even sure I had heard him right, "Well, you could, but you just don't give a guy a chance."
Never-mind that his sentence didn't really fit what we were talking about, I sat there in shock. I glanced up at him to see if he really said that and our eyes met in a meaningful glance. Desperately I searched my memory for any indication that he had ever expressed any kind of interest in me other than as his sister's friend. There were the times we walked his student-security guard route with him at night, mostly listening to him complain about his current girlfriend. The times we had sat at the same table in the Student Center doing our homework and complaining to him we had eaten too way too much at suppertime and we were probably going to gain 10 lbs. overnight.
Even in the one class we had together, Anthropology, all I could remember is him and his brother appointing me The Person Who Woke Them Up When the Movie Was Over So They Didn't Get In Trouble for Sleeping person. Nope, there wasn't a single incident where he had ever shown me that he had the slightest bit interest in me.
"I'm not sure what you're talking about," I replied carefully.
"Nevermind," he said and went over to take his rightful place beside the much-flattered, Chatty Cathy. They ended up dating for several months after that.
The point of all this is, Second Life had suddenly transported me to an uncomfortable place I thought I would never ever again have the occasion to revisit. Part of me wants to screech, "It's just frickin' pixels, people!" while another part of me wants to help the men avatars gather up their eyeballs and put them back in their head.
I contemplated this whole, strange, insecure feeling for an entire day. How odd, I thought. To feel this way because of what's essentially, a silly cartoon. How utterly ridiculous, how shallow, how juvenile. I went to bed secure in my womanhood.
Yesterday morning I found myself all alone in the game, none of my friends had logged in yet and I gave seriously examined my avatar. Hmmmm, I thought, and clicked on "Appearances". Then I went to the "Torso Tab", to "Breasts" and increased them from "45" to "55". Satisfied, I went back to working on a Snowy Woods Background to put up for sale.
No, I don't want to think about what I just did. It hurts my head.
It all started when I first joined and had the ability to control every part of my body's measurements, even down to how much cleavage and gravity I wanted my VR breasts to have. I chose a generic-looking type of avatar, stuck a blonde wig on her, dressed her in jeans, sandals and a nice top and I was good to go.
After every tenth or so male avatar leered at me when I was standing by my closest female friend in the game, who was also blonde, I decided some changes were in order. The reason for the leering was they thought we looked like sisters but it was a smarmy type of looking, not just an observation. They would say, "Oooooooooh, sisters! Yummy!!" as in "Oooooooh, sisters, let's have sex." I promptly changed my hair to dark red and that solved that. No one looks at my avatar now.
The feelings of insecurity started out insidiuously enough. I would be standing around with my friends, having a nice chat about world politics, gardening, graphics work, etc and suddenly one of the males standing about would coo, "Ooooh, Arabellamia (not her real name), what a lovely dress!" (Arabellamia dresses her avatar much better than I do mine, I simply don't have the time or patience to search through the 30,000 items in my inventory for something to pretty to wear. Another male will say, "Ooooh, nice hair, Arabellamia, what a pretty hairstyle and color!" Yet another will say, "I love that new standing animation you have, Arabellamia. So sweet, so cute. It's just adorable!! Where did you get it?" I usually stand there and wait for the accolades to finish so that we can go on chatting. I don't begrudge her the compliments, she deserves them. Her avatar looks very, very pretty and she has spent a lot of time and money making it look attractive.
What bothers me is I am suddenly thrown back to high school in which I would be standing around with a group of friends (ok, this happened in college, too) and the blonde, flirty, pretty girls would get all the attention and after a period of time, I would quietly fade into the background and just watch them operate in awe. I guess I should have picked up some pointers from them but I mostly remember thinking: "if I had to do that eye-batting, empty-flattery, hip-thrust-out-to-the-side-pouty-lip sort of thing just to get a boyfriend, I would rather go without." I distinctly remember accidentally ending up in a conversation with a very popular older jock type guy in the hallway during lunch and having him say to me, "Wow, you're so much fun. How come I never knew that about you?" He promptly asked me and my best friend, Juniper, to go driving around town with him and his friend that weekend, which we did. It soon became apparent, after the first 15 min., that "driving around town" meant a lot of kissing and things you don't want to do with someone you don't really know.
The one incident I remember in college is of sitting around my roommate's (now my sister-in-law) brother's apartment with all of his upperclassmen friends and watching our gorgeous friend, Chatty-Cathy, do the Batty-Eyed, pouty-lip, laugh-inanely thing on the other side of the room. It seemed to be working as she had all the men there swarming around her like bees to a honeypot (for lack of a cleverer idiom). I remember sitting on a ledge of some sort and my sister-in-law's brother, Thomas-the-Popular-Senior came to sit down beside me. I was greatly shocked because, although we had been friends for a while, I was sure he was interested in the vivacious, giggling girl across the room and wondered what he wanted.
"What are you looking at?" Thomas-The-Popular-Senior asked.
"Cathy. She's so pretty and fun. Everyone loves being around her," I didn't say it in a jealous way, I don't think. I don't remember being jealous of her, just resigned that I could never be like that.
"Yes, she is beautiful," he said, as he sipped on his coke.
"She makes everyone feel important," I sighed, "I wish I could be more like that, but I just don't know how."
Thomas-the-Popular said softly, so soft I wasn't even sure I had heard him right, "Well, you could, but you just don't give a guy a chance."
Never-mind that his sentence didn't really fit what we were talking about, I sat there in shock. I glanced up at him to see if he really said that and our eyes met in a meaningful glance. Desperately I searched my memory for any indication that he had ever expressed any kind of interest in me other than as his sister's friend. There were the times we walked his student-security guard route with him at night, mostly listening to him complain about his current girlfriend. The times we had sat at the same table in the Student Center doing our homework and complaining to him we had eaten too way too much at suppertime and we were probably going to gain 10 lbs. overnight.
Even in the one class we had together, Anthropology, all I could remember is him and his brother appointing me The Person Who Woke Them Up When the Movie Was Over So They Didn't Get In Trouble for Sleeping person. Nope, there wasn't a single incident where he had ever shown me that he had the slightest bit interest in me.
"I'm not sure what you're talking about," I replied carefully.
"Nevermind," he said and went over to take his rightful place beside the much-flattered, Chatty Cathy. They ended up dating for several months after that.
The point of all this is, Second Life had suddenly transported me to an uncomfortable place I thought I would never ever again have the occasion to revisit. Part of me wants to screech, "It's just frickin' pixels, people!" while another part of me wants to help the men avatars gather up their eyeballs and put them back in their head.
I contemplated this whole, strange, insecure feeling for an entire day. How odd, I thought. To feel this way because of what's essentially, a silly cartoon. How utterly ridiculous, how shallow, how juvenile. I went to bed secure in my womanhood.
Yesterday morning I found myself all alone in the game, none of my friends had logged in yet and I gave seriously examined my avatar. Hmmmm, I thought, and clicked on "Appearances". Then I went to the "Torso Tab", to "Breasts" and increased them from "45" to "55". Satisfied, I went back to working on a Snowy Woods Background to put up for sale.
No, I don't want to think about what I just did. It hurts my head.