Gender juxtaposition, and what it says about us.

I was talking on FE about mesh hair, which is a whole 'nother topic I'm not going to get into at this time, and it was suggested I check out a hair store I'd never been to. Now I'd seen prim hair from this place on other people and it looked fine to me, I had been meaning to go there anyway sometime.

I did the usual thing, checking out demos and whatnot, hobnobbing with fashionfolk, but as I was looking around I realized the hair display vendors bothered me for a reason.

This is the guy hair. This place has some VERY nice guy hair and if you're a guy avatar, GO now! You won't be disappointed.



Those are attractive guy avatars in my opinion. They look like adults, old enough to buy alcohol and even old enough to have graduated college and have jobs.

These are some of the female hair displays:





Putting it bluntly, those avatars look a LOT younger than the male displays. The bodies may have boobs, but the faces look to my eyes chubby cheeked young girls wearing a lot of makeup, not even old enough for high school. And most certainly not as mature looking as the males.

That bothered me...to me it was a sort of "Toddlers and Tiaras" effect. Now I know that in certain SL communities there's a trend of dressing and looking like a part Japanese cutesy anime inspired girl, and there's nothing wrong of that. It was the juxtaposition of the two, manly adult and cutesy girl face with knockers that bothered me and what it said about the fashion community of SL. I think that if the guys has been your standard slender Bishonen anime-inspired guy/young Bieber type, essentially the male version of the female displays, it wouldn't have bothered me so much.

But it did. But it's not like I didn't think the hair wasn't nice hair, it was...sigh.

A try at a better ad.

I've complained about ads and store displays before and I've decided to put my money where my mouth is.

Here's an ad, for a a gown that I very much like from Crimson Shadow, that could use a little bit of work. The gown and ad are located at Crimson Shadow Rezzable 229,166,27



Now, that ad isn't as horrible as some I've seen, but it could use a little work. In my opinion the ads major offenses are bad lighting of the avatar, and the text is placed directly over the background causing legibility problems.


Here's my quick and dirty remake of the ad, which still sucks, but is somewhat improved.



Notice how I have my avatar lit a touch better, though I probably should have turned up the contrast a bit on the avatar images compared with background. I've also placed the text, not over the background itself, but over a plain black "information area". Using such areas, separate from the item images themselves increases legibility, though I should have made the text bigger. My ad also shows the included shoes. Since I have that nice space at the side, I could add a store/brand logo which would have been an excellent idea. I might, depending on legibility, even be able to list information on the model's skin/eyes/hair right on the ad/display.

So there you have it, my own example of an ad improvement.