Avatars and image.

There have been several articles and blog posts recently about "game" avatars and image

On Second Life Arts & Total Entertainment Slatenight: Fantasies of Femininity

http://www.slatenight.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=82&Itemid=40".Avatars, Power and the Ethics of Freedom in Second Life

Online Identities

Blog post on Terra Nova


My Other Self is an Ass Kicking Supermodel

Blog post on Second Style, making reference to the Slatenight articles


The uneasy tension of being Barbie


Making reference to the Terra Nova blog post, My other self

And now for my commentary:

I'm transgendered, some might call me a pre-anything transsexual, some might call me a crossdresser, but I always use transgendered.

I have two regular usernames I use, habit I adopted back in the days when I called myself a crossdresser. I had one (CronoCloud) that I used for general stuff and geeky stuff and another (VeronicaMoonlit visit my little webpage I set up to replace my old tripod site) I used just for transgender related things. I joined SL to take part in a vodcast related chat. To the vodcast fans, I'm CronoCloud. So that's the name I used when I joined and I chose a male avatar so as not to out myself.

And then I found out about the fashion stuff. And as I said in previous blog posts, once I found out about that, I wanted a pretty avatar too. One that felt "right" on that was really "me"
So I changed to a female avatar, and that's what I've been using ever since. I also decided to go ahead an announce my transgenderedness in my avatar's profile. It's right in the first line.

I try to convey a certain tone in my avatar's look, classy, sophisticated and appropriately sexy.I guess you might call my avatar a "lady". That's how I envision her, and I guess thats kind of what I want to be, even though it's not likely to happen in RL due to family and financial issues. Most of the things my avatar has worn, I would wear in RL, if I had her perfect figure of course. I often wear a similar haircolor, browns with a touch of red. My eyes are dark brown instead of that green. My avatar sometimes wears glasses because I do in RL. She's me, if I was a supermodel. :-)

I don't go for "hoochie clothes", I tend to wear business wear and simple dresses:

linen suit from Pixel Dolls:

Houndstooth suit from OPIUM with a new briefcase from Odds & Ends

,p>
And probably the most drop dead sexy dress in my inventory, Taliah Talamscas Schneewitchen. Afriend convinced me to buy it.

Second Life is special to me, it appeals to my fashionista nature and to my transgendered nature.

I have read Naomi Wolf's "The Beauty Myth" so I do understand the social-cultural implications of what I have my avatar wear. But in the end, I guess it comes down to, deep inside I want to be pretty. and since that's not going to happen in RL even if I was to transition, it gets to happen in SL And it's kind of like those times whn I was young, that I was able to play with my sister's Barbies without anyone else knowing.

I might add more to this post as I think of it, I'll link back to it if that happens.