The Avatar Fashionista's Beauty Ideal: Bollywood Down, Natalia Imbruglia, Elisha Cuthbert, Rachel Leigh Cook Rising

Recently, a slew of Second Life fashionista bloggers ran screenshots of their avatars through MyHeritage's Find the Celebrity in You filter, and posted the results. It's a web app that analyzes a human face (real or virtual), quantifies its essential characteristics (nose shape, brow curvature, etc.), then compares that data to a spectrum of popcult celebrities.  Put a bunch of those profile results together, and you have a sloppy but fun tool for measuring our collective sense of what's beautiful in the human face, nowadays.  If you wanted a gorgeous avatar, and you had the ability to make your face look quite literally like anyone, who would you look like?

I've collected the results from 15 Second Life Residents, and there's some clear trends:

More often than not, they resemble Rachel Leigh Cook, Elisha Cuthbert, or Natalie Imbruglia.  Four of the 15 avatars resemble those three, with Angelina Jolie a close runner up, at three. Caucasian Western celebrities predominate, with a Hallie Berry/Gabrielle Union/Mariah Carey smattering, followed by a strong minority of Japanese stars.  (Ayumi Hamasaki ranks as high as Angelina.)

If you're a longtime reader of this blog, however, you'll notice a striking lacuna:  where's all the Bollywood celebrities?  Almost exactly two years ago, a number of SL women put their avatars through the same software, and almost all of them resembled Indian movie starlets. (As with legendary fashionista Torrid Midnight, at right, who got paired with the equally legendary Aishwarya Rai.) In this 2008 cohort, almost none of them do.  Why?  Did MyHeritage simply change their analysis software to disadvantage Indian faces?  Or has the fashionista's taste in beauty changed in recent years, from the influence of popular skin designers, or a demographic shift among the user base?  (Brazilians and Japanese are now among the most active Second Life users, after the US and EU audience.) 

Possible explanations abound.  Check out my sampling of fashionista/celebrity comparisons, and see what other trends you can observe: Myllie Writer, Sandy Cleghorn, Melanie Kidd, Moire Georgette, Neferia Norway, Dakota Lubitsch, Sioxie Legend, Kyri of Essence of SL, Dorothy Willis, Rowan Carroll, Felicity Blumenthal, Aeryn of FabuLASH, this unnamed fashionista from My2SL, Sunshine Kukulcan, and Elise Petrov (with the sole Bollywood resemblance I spotted, to Ms. Rai.)

Comments

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

MyHeritage.com seems to base the match primarily on how ones hair frames ones face, not makeup/face shape or haircolor.

[Ann Otoole]

Not too sure about that crono. I did a pic of my avi with no hair and got a match on Drew Barrymore. Heck I don't even know a single movie with her in it. Who knew lol?

Shape/skin makers might find this a very valuable resource indeed if they can accomplish 100% matches.

[Ann Otoole]

After fiddling with this tool I found that doing the pic bald produces the most repeatable results.
And the overall effect appears to be related mostly to the skin. Some skins I have produced zero matches. But the skin I normally wear produced this: http://www.annotoole.com/AnnLookAlikes.jpg

I tried it with my Asian shape and my normal shape and most of the same celebs were present but with lower match probability against the Asian. Thus its the skin, not the hair or shape mainly. But shape plays an important part as far as shape outline appearance. (pear, heart, oval, etc.)

[Connie Sec]

Yep, did this a while back. I'd wear one hair and get zero matches..and another with matches. Change hair, a different batch of "matches". A fun thing to add to your Flickr profile mind you :)

[Laetizia Coronet]

Whoever has a thing for appearing as realistic as possible, might want to look here (click on 'portfolio', then on the celebs at the bottom of the page) before comparing him/herself to pictures of celebs.
Photorealistic - or Photoshopalistic?

[Nicola Escher]

Hehe, you're about 2 years behind on this meme, Hamlet:

http://www.nicolaescher.com/journal/article/6/avatars-and-their-celeb-look-alikes

Here's the weird thing. Since I posted that on my blog "Katrina Kaif" is continually one of the top incoming search keywords to my site!

[DeltaDharmaDawn Aubret]

I have done this before, can't remember which was the match, Drew Barrymore I think. However on this run thru I only got single hits, one with hair and one with out. Zhang Ziyi and Devon Aoki. Was not familiar with either women (am now). I have refined my look since first entering SL and it makes sense that I would tend toward an asian influence as I was raised in Hawaii. I do think it is more likely a combo of things, influx of new brings a broader concept of beauty and perhaps an updated pool of celebrities. It is interesting though how it makes me re-examine my own concept of self.

[Princess Ivory]

Hamlet, I think your 15-person sample must all buy their shapes off the rack at the same store, so to speak. I ran my avatar through this twice, once in August 2007, and once now, a year later. The only real difference was a change in hair and skin. My shape,especially my face, remains compeletely unchanged over the course of the year. And I did not get ANY of the "popular celebrities" that your fashionsita sample seemed so prone to. In fact, I got a lot of Japanese matches! I think maybe my large eyes and pointed chin are what do it. Anyway, my top match a year ago was Ayumi Hamasaki (80% rating), and this year, it was Ai Otsuki (76% rating). Mind you, I'm not Japanese, and neither is my character. See my results here:

May 2008:
http://hrhprincessivory.blogspot.com/2008/05/playing-with-celebrity-look-alikes.html

August 2007:
http://hrhprincessivory.blogspot.com/2007/08/im-turning-japanese.html

And when I ran a RL picture of myself, my top hit was Jennifer Garner! I guess they picked up on that girl next door aspect of my appearance!

Princess Ivory

[Kanomi]

I got Sarah Silverman. Woot!

http://kanomi.blogspot.com/2008/05/my-heritage.html

[Gahum Riptide]

What's funny is, Gahum pulls up almost all female celebrities when he has his hair on. Cindy Crawford apparently is his best match, although he did score Cilian Murphy, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Donnie Osmond. He scored Krisdyanti, an Indonesian singer.

When I take the hair off, he gets Heidi Lum as his top choice, followed closely by David Boreanaz. He got Patricia Velazquez both times. This time, he gets an Indian celebrity, Bipasha Basu. He also managed to score Cary Grant (at 55%).

Using the eyebrow straightening attachment that came with his favorite skin (the skin normally has angled eyebrows), his top choice is now Julia Roberts followed by Ricky Martin. He now gets 5 male celebrities: Ricky Martin, Henry Cavill, Boy George (a much younger, skinnier Boy George), Steve Buscemi, and Jamie Callum.

[naruto episode]

Whoever has a thing for appearing as realistic as possible, might want to look here (click on 'portfolio', then on the celebs at the bottom of the page) before comparing him/herself to pictures of celebs.
Photorealistic - or Photoshopalistic?

[Gayathri]

This is really a great post and have great comments!!! Give a look to this portfolio

Regards,
photo restoration