Ever since I tried to create my first avatar shape, I understood something wasn’t quite right in the land of Second Life. The prim and the avatar units of measurement did not correspond to each other. For instance, one of them was in full disagreement with reality, or else everything was disproportionately bad. Having developed an early interests in basic SL architecture and shortly after in landscaping, I soon noticed that every house or building I visited always looked too big for me. It was as if every floor level and interior were two or three times what I thought they should be.
For a male avatar, my height was below average (it still is I think). Most girls were usually taller than me, though not by much, and guys were muscular behemoths I could only equal using a ladder. Yet I was relatively taller than some of my most experienced friends, so that push me to modify my shape to make it more on par with my RL self. That’s when I also realized what was possibly bothering male avatars and causing them to come out so huge.
If you’ve been a female avatar all your SL, you’ve been in cyber-heaven… for the most part. Since women are more beautiful than men no matter what dimensional space we occupy, the female avatar mesh has a well-rounded contour: smooth body with soft edges, and overall friendly sliders. You can go up or down the scale with confidence that you will retain that natural elegance (almost) to the extreme. Males, on the other hand, seem to be designed using an outdated mesh, that calls for a humongous look as the only escape route to a normal silhouette. In order to achieve a somewhat sleek appearance, you have to move the sliders to the maximum side of the scale range if you don’t want your body to end up looking bumpy and rough. The lower –towards normality– you go, the more disfigured you become. So in Second Life’s world of perfection, in which most people believe everyone must be beautiful and flawless, men have been forced to be above average to opt for acceptance. Eventually, women didn’t want to be left behind their male friends and lovers, and for a time they too push their shapes to gigantism.
I think most SL residents have always been well aware of this situation, and have even asked for fixes for years… to no avail (as usual). The so-called femboys circumvented this obstacle by sometimes using the female shape to create male ones. The same road was taken by those who wanted to portray children, because there was no better choice for them either. Those of us sticking to the male avatar mesh (and males are greatly outnumbered in SL, hence maybe that’s why Linden Lab has ignored our dilemma for ever) are still forced to be out of proportions to look “normal”. Personally, the lowest I have gotten while retaining a non-bumpy look still put me at 6 feet, 9 inches tall. If I fall to an acceptable level of deformity at the shoulders-neck juncture, I can approach 6 feet and 4 inches, thus entering into the rightful size of things.
What is real isn’t necessarily what is average. The world –thank gooseness– is full of heterogeneity, and that’s what makes it so exciting. And diversity goes up a very steep curve if we consider that the ideal is a subjective concept on which we will hardly come to an agreement. So don’t pay too much attention to what your measures should be and be content with your looks. If they please you, then it is worth it.
The problem right now, though, is the messy state of mesh in SL, especially for the fashion industry, and people’s well-funded fears that LL will not provide or won’t adopt an apt solution anytime soon due to the company’s long history of ignoring users’ requests and their defining trait of not addressing what we think should matter. Just take that proportions problem as an example. So in order to ease the transition to mesh clothes, the imminent future of SL, some people deem it necessary or at least advisable to establish some kind of average male and female shape values, on which clothes designers could base their work. The sooner they find a way to provide customers with what they want, the merrier we –us and them– will be.
For further readings or to share your basic shape’s slider values, visit Strawberry Singh’s What’s Your Digits? – Take 2: The Mesh Revolution! Don’t forget to read people’s comments too. Questions answered after the break…
How has the introduction of mesh affected your SL, if at all? Are you open to wearing mesh often or do you still shy away from it?
I’m very slow at changing clothes lately (hell, I wore the same outfit for 17 months straight last time), and have just recently bought my first couple of mesh jackets and pants as a rezzday present last week. So I’ve been wearing mesh for just a few days as to say it has affected my life in that respect. All I can say is that I do welcome mesh, and I do hope people adopt it quickly for everything, not just for clothes. I’m sure it’s definitely worth the investment. I’ve already own other mesh products prior to buying mesh clothes, so I do like it very much.
Have you changed your shape to fit into mesh? If so, did you go bigger or smaller?
For the outfit I’m wearing right now, kind of: I tweaked my head size a little bit, made it slightly larger so it looks more proportionate, from my point of view of course. I did it for the sake of keeping body balance, not for mesh per se. It was a mere three points up, but it made a difference (I think). I don’t see myself tweaking and re-tweaking my shape just to fit into anything, that’s not the way to go. If something doesn’t fit me right, then it isn’t meant for me, so I’d just go hop to the next store and look for something else. That’s the way we do in RL, isn’t it? I’m not a Hollywood star, so clothes aren’t designed exclusively for me. Any designer willing to, though? Let me know.
Do you think the mesh deformer will resolve a lot of the issues people seem to have with mesh and will it encourage you to wear mesh more often, if you don’t already?
The only issue I see the deformer resolving is Linden Lab’s incapacity to do things right. It is shameful they couldn’t deal with this issue before introducing mesh into SL properly. For me it’s like they went like this: “Hey, look at this thing, how cool! Let’s add it to SL”, and then going: “ok, we did it! Does anyone know how it works?” (rolls eyes). The way I see it, we’re still beta-testing.
People will go on using mesh, deformer or no deformer. I’m sure all of us are up for innovation, or we wouldn’t be here at all. We have dealt with SL limitations forever, so another one doesn’t make a big difference. In any case, limitations are part of the system, or else it would stop growing up and improving. As the saying goes: No pain, no gain.