Are you there, God? It’s me, Intellagirl.
Toward a Better Understanding of the Body in the Virtual Realm
I can distinctly remember back in 198*mumbles* when my body began to change. My legs got longer, my hips got a bit more ample, and then the whole breast thing happened. Of course, like any life-altering “you can’t go back no matter how much you want to change” it took me a bit to get used to this new body but I did and I’ve even learned to love it and occasionally use it to my benefit rather than treat it as a form of vulnerability or insecurity.
However, I can’t say the same of my virtual body. Why would a body I made, a body I can rearrange, hide, cover or reveal, a body that I’m not stuck with in any way make me feel twinges of insecurity?
Because I can choose how my avatar body looks. That’s why.
In real life, if I had a deformity or irregularity of any kind, if I was overly short, had a limp, or freakishly large purple freckles, people might have pity on me but they wouldn’t judge me. Those physical traits would be the result of something out of my control. However, in SecondLife (which I’ll use as my “virtual realm” example here because it’s where I’m at now) I can choose exactly how I look and everyone understand that and therefore I can be judged on those choices. One can also make the argument that because everyone can look perfect it doesn’t really matter at all how you look. Tell that to the gaggle of women outside the first flexible hair and clothing hair vendor I saw yesterday. “Twirl it girls! Oh your hair looks fantastic, sweetie. Are we ready? Let’s go strut our stuff at a club!” Meanwhile, I realize I’m the only one standing there whose limbs are even remotely covered and whose avatar doesn’t look like it just walked out of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. There I am in my long sleeve black super-clingy sweater and my punky jeans with the little skulls on the thigh. If I wore that outfit down the street in my hometown I’d be subversive. In SecondLife I may as well be the “church lady.”
When everyone can look like a stripper, what’s the value of looking like a stripper?
I suppose it’s akin to making fun of people who have bad plastic surgery but not criticizing someone for growing older. If you have a choice to make then you can be judged on it.
Sherry Turkle and others have theorized that virtual selves are perfected versions of ourselves, a version of ourselves that is closer to what we would be if we could shed our physical limitations, social and cultural limitations, and even aspects of gender that might limit how we express who we are. I used to agree but now I’m not so sure.
Please note that I’m only talking about the “physical” presence we choose to portray in a virtual environment. Our textual communication styles and the personalities we express in virtual realms may indeed agree with the theories of Turkle and others. That’s too much for me to take on while running on one cup of coffee but it’s worth a look later. Right now I’m only contemplating the physical representations we choose in virtual realms where we have the choice of how we look. This rules out characters in MMORPGs that limit our customization and other virtual spaces where we have only a few choices of how to appear. Instead, I’m thinking about SecondLife and other virtual 3-D chat-type applications that allow the user to create an avatar from a multitude of choices. In SecondLife, the ability to customize how you appear I endless and, because I’m focusing on the results of the choices we make in how we appear, SecondLife seems to be the perfect MUVE (Multi-user Virtual Environment) to discuss. I’ll also add that I haven’t done any extensive primary research about this topic so I can only express my own experiences and what I’ve observed.
So why do I disagree with Turkle? How can I think that the bodies (especially the women) in SecondLife aren’t wearing skimpy clothes and flaunting perfect bodies because they are free of fear of judgment, jealousy, and sexual assault and all the other unfortunate downsides of having a perfect body in the real world? To start, we, who live in Western civilizations especially, live in societies that value beauty and physical perfection. We value material evidence of success and prosperity in the forms of physical beauty and adornment. This seems no different in SecondLife. In a world where we could potentially reject the need to look perfect and fit and beautiful, we instead adhere to these values tooth and nail. Instead of saying “no” to the expectation that a woman must be beautiful from morning to night and “no” to society’s value of flaunting skin, women in SecondLife seem to embrace it and then push it that much further. This could just be fantasy fulfillment (as I’ve theorized about the “playing house” syndrome in SL) but I think it’s more than that. I think it might be an attempt to achieve a kind of status in the SL culture by looking a certain way.
Please don’t assume that I’m judging women in SL for doing this. I have more than my own fair share of issues about my physical self in the MUVE. I may not have gone for the Barbie look but I think my choices are just as problematic but for other reasons. When I created my original avatar in SL I attempted to recreate myself (though a few pounds thinner and with pink hair that doesn’t have to be re-dyed every few days as mine does in real life). Intellagirl (the SL version) has glasses similar to mine; she has my freckles; she has hair similar to mine, my nose ring, make-up like mine; I even went so far as to import the graphics files I used to create my real-life tattoos and put them on my avatar. This similarity to my actual physical self has brought up some interesting conundrums. For example, the night my graduate student friends asked me to show them what sex was like in SL. I wasn’t embarrassed to show them how the system worked until I realized that stripping down my avatar revealed a body that was frighteningly close to my real body. I might as well have been showing them nude pictures of myself. Then there is the swimsuit issue. When I built the first version of my SL campus I decided a swimming pool might be a nice place for students to talk casually and enjoy the space. Naturally, I needed a swim suit. I found a bikini that I thought was less revealing than most and put it on. Then I was struck (like a ton of bricks) with the question of whether allowing my students to see my avatar in skimpy clothes was appropriate. Am I too uptight or is this a valid concern? I’m still wrestling with that issue.
So what is the nature of our tenuous relationships with our virtual bodies? I’m still wrestling with the idea and still coming up with questions that I’m not ready to answer but I welcome any input. As I think more about it I’ll be sure to jot it down here.
