Vice's Motherboard Features Izzy Button's Realistic Imperfections for Default Perfect SL Avatars

Samantha Cole of Vice's Motherboard, being a savvy tech journalist, saw the significance in the sudden rise of realistic enhancements to default-perfect avatars -- and so now Izzie Button's cellulite and stretch marks and her blue veins in breasts for female avatars are now being featured on Vice, where Izzy tells Samantha:

“At some point my customers started requesting ‘imperfections’ from me such as wrinkles, eyebags, pores, and aged scars,” Button told me in an email. “They told me they wanted their avatar to look more real, and that they don't want to look like everyone else with flawless poreless skin, young faces, and skinny shapes...

“I’ve noticed there is a trend in SL, away from looking like flawless Barbies with perfect poreless and smooth skin and skinny shapes," she said. "A lot of people don't want their avis to look like dolls anymore, like everyone else. it's more about individuality and realism now, about being unique and standing out from the masses.”

Along with a move to embrace real life imperfections through an avatar, I suggested some other trends that helped make this market possible:

"We've been seeing avatar beauty standards in Second Life become more diverse in recent years,” he told me in an email. “For one thing, Kim Kardashian-type style has become very popular in SL, giving rise to many more full-figured bodies and multicultural looks.” There’s also the phenomenon of Second Life fashionistas sharing their avatar customizations in screenshots and video on social media, such as Flickr, Instagram, or YouTube. “So there's a real effort to bring novelty and personality to these images.”

 Much more here.

Comments

[Tay Andros]

Individuality and realism is now people looking like weird human/mantis/chicken hybrids with stretchmarks and boob lines? That is what everyone looks like now and that is not diversity dear.

The onslaught of mesh heads just makes everyone look like they all bought the same experience pretty much. It's all very same samey, again I ask you, that's what diversity is now?

All of this is laughable.