Great rant from reader "Nadeja", leaping off from my interview in CNN about prejudice against non-attractive human avatars -- specifically, on how it impacts female users in virtual worlds:
Sadly, it's true.
Also it's more than just being fat or slim.
I had messages from guys commenting on the physical appearance of my avatar (i.e. various body parts) and my outfits too, grumpily and selfishly comparing that with their own personal tastes, [as] if the only purpose of women's avatars (and I suspect also the purpose of women in real life) were to please them.
That "no fat chicks" sign, too, was indeed targeting women: nobody cared if guys were fat or slim. I don't mean that guys have no issues looks-wise (as [reader] Penny says, height for them), but there is a lot of pressure on women in terms of what they look like.
Although I usually receive compliments, my avatar has been bodyshamed for my thighs being "too fat".
Someone else bodyshamed in a very paternalistic way my same avatar for being "too much skinny".
Therefore, besides being selfish, is also foolish, because beauty standards are so subjective.
But it is worse than that.
If you make your avatar based on your real life appearance and you have little self-esteem already, that social pressure and comments don't help and you may end up looking at yourself in the RL mirror, feeling insecure and wondering how much obese or anorexic you look, even though you are neither. When you are exposed to this in real life, some girl ends up actually anorexic. But even if it's only a virtual world, it contributes, especially if your avatar is like yourself. Another drop, and another drop... So it's also toxic and can have consequences.
Since it's silly, you can ignore that, right? It's not so simple.
Nadeja explains why, also addressing my point that the most popular metaverse platforms, Fortnite and Roblox, do not have realistic avatars, but cartoonish or LEGO-like ones (respectively):
1. It shouldn't be normalized and told (explicitly or implicitly) "it's your problem if you are affected [by this very mean thing]", "if you don't like that, just move away". That's what the abusers usually tell, to have a free pass to continue to abuse, also to blame the victim.
#2. Everyone has a different sensitivity (or a bad day too). If you are desensitized, it doesn't make it OK for kids to watch horror gore videos as you do, nor to tell those who have experienced trauma and PTSD "don't be silly! Just shrug off the next abuse". It's not that simple and however it's a fact that you can affect people with bodyshaming. If you behave in a mean way anyway, that only makes you a mean person, with no understanding and no empathy; not because of them. It's your fault for not caring.
#3. The article is right. More you look like a realistic woman, more that happens. You are less bodyshamed if you are a tiny possum or giant blue snake woman, than a realistic woman (curvy or not and everything else dudes wants from women). There are also the exaggerated bits and the Uncanny Valley effect that triggers, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about.
#4. You are interacting with other people, not watching TV. Virtual, fantasy, sure. Still SL isn't like watching TV. Whether it's bodyshaming or any other toxic behavior, muting and teleporting away may work when it's just you and a random dude encountered in a random place that you don't care of. If you are in a group and in a social place that you like and you want to keep doing the activities you enjoy there (let alone if you are the hostess etc.), you have to deal with more complex social and group dynamics. If people around you are generally supportive, the situation would improve, else eventually you would give up and leave. It is not so automatic and simple.
And if that happens often - and for women in SL it's pretty common to deal with guys hitting on you, at first pretending to be nice, but caring only for your (virtual) body -- that has to be in a certain way to please them, even when they themselves look just like newbies, let alone showing up naked where you less expect that, but noob-with-a-super-detailed-and-expensive-bit - eventually it's not so awesome on the long run.
Would SL be better with LEGO-like or cartoonish avatars? Maybe. I myself sometimes think of using a tiny avatar etc. It feels more relaxed. Guys expect, judge and wants less from me. On the other hand I feel it like not wearing miniskirts for fear of being rape.
I.E., why should women feel pressured not to dress a certain way when it's the toxic harassers (or worse) who should change?
I keep thinking about how much the platform developer can change all this, if they really wanted to. It's not enough to just say, "Well clearly customers on our platform want realistic, traditionally attractive female avatars, so we can't stop them."
But every virtual world platform imposes limits to avatar appearance and customization in various ways at the start. You can't create giant-sized avatars by default in Second Life, for example, because the system couldn't handle them, and it would drastically impact the experience for everyone else. So why make it easy for users who want to bring their real life social biases (unconscious or otherwise) into the virtual world?
I get “you are hot except your boobs are to small, and you look like a little girl”
This is repulsive on many levels… first, if you are trying to be demeaning,using a demeaning term like “boobs” or “tits” is a good way to start… these are terms that women can use that men should probably avoid on a first conversation..: my response is usually along the lines of “you look like a man but your peepee is to small
Secondly, why are you thinking I look like a little girl but hot!?!?
Posted by: ilsa | Monday, October 10, 2022 at 04:25 PM
I mean...on the one hand, yeah, duh. It doesn't matter where you go, what platform you're on, this is just navigating life, online and off, for anyone female in any way. Is it right/fair/not producing a background noise of white hot anger all the time? Nah, that's just what you deal with when you or others perceive you as being female. But it's the way it is, and we keep fighting tooth and nail to make it slightly better and sometimes it gets slightly better.
So, no, we shouldn't stop trying, but fucked if I know how we "fix" it. Keep trying to make it less socially acceptable- change the actual minds, not just platform options; the much more difficult task. Even platforms with minimal avatar customization have it (I was a big World of Warcraft player for a bit before I started up SL, eons ago- you could basically pick your body type by race, which effected how you functionally played too, and some hair style and tinting options and it still had user female body issue problems ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE). Go on a dating app (don't. And don't open your DMs if you do. Ever). Facebook. Forums. Before the WoW phase, I had a bunch of webpages, not internet famous or anything but that strangers would stumble across, with no actual photos of myself, just drawings, and woooo boy. Weird sexual-ish propositions all over the place from men who didn't even mean it that way, they just don't know any other way to interact. There's a subtle undercurrent that women ignore, and men tend to not even be aware of, under just about everything.
It's gotten better, because more of it is being acknowledged, but still: assholes gonna asshole. Sad truth is that as long as we have meat suits, some people are going to think with their reproductive organs- and other people are going to encourage them to be "part of the group" and do it- and we're going to have some struggle with this idea that "those people" are just going to be objectified objects they will see as existing only for their own selfish desires. Just don't make it easy for them to thrive and expand.
If you're female, you've been developing your way of dealing with it on your side since birth. We all make different choices depending on what exactly we've experienced directly and what we want, but we've all got our toolbox that we've been sharpening up our entire lives. Doesn't make it right, it's just the way we are required to live. Doesn't make it STILL not hard to deal with each. and. every. fucking. time. Also doesn't make it not fucking exhausting on a day to day basis.
Is ignoring it and putting everyone in a Disneyfied avatar that is cartoony and provides zero body shape customization the solution though? Because that's been tried, and that just encourages body dysphoria too. (And STILL with the disgusting/offensive DMs.) And really, at this point, SL users have been breaking the "rules" about how an avatar is intended to work for well over a decade- they said "no I don't want that crappy hair, I'll wear prims; I don't want that janky Ruth avatar, I want big smooth Lola Tango boobs, I want a full mesh body that uses the sliders in a way between subtly and massively ignoring how the original shapes actually work" and also tinies and massive giants too. You open the door to any customization and users WILL run with it, for good and ill. It's like the problem in all the discussions about the potential dangers of AI: the inherent danger of AI isn't that computers will decide on their own that humans need to be exterminated, the problem is that they will develop all of their ideas based on what humans can come up with just faster, harder, and with potentially more far reaching consequences (an example of it in action, under 24 hours to turn a chat bot on twitter into a nazi complete with genocidal tendencies). We're the problem.
It's also the miniskirt defense: it's not my responsibility to form myself into the shape that makes YOU comfortable.
Posted by: Allegory Malaprop | Monday, October 10, 2022 at 05:17 PM
Why can't the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?
Posted by: Luther Weymann | Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 09:02 PM