Relax, everyone! I’ve not caught Mr. Keng in the arms of another, or cheating on me, or cybering with someone 🙂

It’s ‘me’, using my alt, set to a ‘larger’ size, so better to understand the problems that ‘plus’ sizes may encounter in SL or RL.

I’m not on the ‘plus’ size, in RL or in SL, but it must be noted that many women are of a larger size, and some even try to replicate that in SL. And so my alt has been operating for a good bit of the afternoon, as we try to dodge RL showers, and coming to an understanding that, if you do operate a larger sized avatar, mesh simply doesn’t work!

Here, my ‘plus’ sized alt has snagged a recent mesh freebie, a denim shorts and tank top ensemble we previously blogged.

Not bad. But with the mesh set to the ‘XL’ size, it’s just managing to do its job -note the fabric breaks at the cuffs on the shorts.

Nude, I don’t think you can say she looks unattractive. On the plus size, yes, but not ugly by any stretch of the imagination. (nb: no prim breasts here, they’re just maxed on the sliders).

And yet if I try other mesh clothing, at an L or XL size on her, they don’t work! Perhaps clothes designers need to take note: an mesh size in XXL, or even XXXL, would widen the scope for plus sized avatars.

My point? In life, we aren’t all one size. In naturism, with older people being part of the gig, XL bodies, worn with supreme confidence, are a regular occurrence. And those older, fuller-figured people, male and female, have enough body confidence to carry it off. I love the fact that no bodies, in naturism, are perfect. And having spoken to other naturists, who celebrate my slim figure…well, they don’t know the list of things that I find imperfect about me. We all have our issues. The problem is not letting them rule our lives.

I’m sure that those people who do run fuller figured avatars bemoan what fuller figured people in RL would say…’I can’t get fashionable clothes to fit’.

The answer, perhaps, is to join the naturist movement in SL, and maybe in RL too, where people will be non-judgemental about your size, and where the best suit you own -your birthday suit- will always fit perfectly.

Ella.

I don’t normally get involved with the blogging element of SLN, my role being more of a bankrolling exercise to supply the bits and bobs as and when required to make Ella and the team’s work easier.

But recent events in my real world have led me to break silence to highlight something that is current: the ‘blur’ between consensual sex and rape.
One of my co-workers, a woman in her early 20s, recently went on a night out. The evening became a blur and she woke up the following morning in a hotel with no recollection of the night’s events. She confided in me because we work closely together and because I guess she sees me as a sort of father/uncle figure, and probably couldn’t bring herself to bring the topic up to her own family.

Piecing together what we can, it rather appears that not much alcohol was involved, but the volume is essentially immaterial anyway. It appears that the total blackout of the night means that what she did have was spiked. The following morning she didn’t recall sex taking place, but she was severely bruised, suffering from vaginal pain that suggested penetration had occurred. Not only does it seem that sex took place, but was certainly non-consensual (in the sense that she was not remotely well-placed to say either yes or no) and was rough sex to some extent, possibly forced sex. Was a condom used? Has she been exposed to an STI? Might she be pregnant? Quite beyond the horrible experience she has endured, she must now deal with all of that.

She has been an emotional wreck since. I’ve tried to help her as best I can, but feel helpless other than acting as a sounding board for her, and offloading the stuff in her head hopefully helps.

***

Thick, appropriately enough, is a colloquialism for ‘stupid’ in British English.

And if there’s anything more #stupid than Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’, celebrating a ‘blur’ between rape and consensual sex (which only exists in the predatory male’s mind), then I’ve yet to see it.

This isn’t something to be taken lightly, made fun of, thought of as even existing. No means no. No means not spiking a girl’s drink in the hope that her semi-comatose state, her total blackout to her surroundings, can mean her semi-compliance (or less) means ‘yes’.

In these circumstances, there is no ‘consensual’. Let’s call it for what it really is: rape.

In the city where I live, there’s a rapist at large, one who will get away scot-free with his offence due to my co-worker not feeling confident enough to go to the police and report it, and because of the delay between the offence occurring and now. To go to the police and make the accusation, she would subsequently -if the police extracted a confession- have her role in the night’s events, and any other sexual experience she has ever had, dragged up in a court that leans towards the point of view of the rapist, rather than the victim. As a result, there are certainly other women who’ve experienced the same violation and who haven’t alerted the police. The scumbag who violated my co-worker may have, in the 10 days since her experience, repeated it.

First and foremost this is a naturist blog. Those of us involved in it are real life naturists, and all of us are away beyond a sense of naked bodies being necessarily sexual. For us, it’s about a sense of freedom and relaxation with social nudity. I don’t look on women as breasts and genitals on display, or as available. The ladies who contribute here don’t ogle penises and size men up. We speak to each other as human beings who just happen to be naked in specific circumstances.

And then we’re subjected to moronic videos containing moronic imagery and roundly questionable morals or ethics such as ‘Blurred Lines’, which -despite protestations- certainly does, in my mind, celebrate ‘rape’ dressed up as ‘consensual sex’. The message is vile. The accompanying video, in which girls prance around in flesh-toned briefs and nothing else, reinforces the objectifcation of women as sex objects.

While all of us who are male within SL are indulging -as the females are, too- in some sense of a fantasy alternative existence, that does not mean we should park a sense of responsibility at the log-in page. The morals that we have in the real world, the respect we should have for women, should also apply within SL. Every rape has a victim. A victim of violence. And we should never allow ourselves to become numbed to that, even in an online game.

While most avatars probably indulge (or have indulged) in cyber-sex, it is incumbent on all of us to have clear lines on what’s right and wrong. The blurring of them should never be encouraged, in or out of SL. Dude…stay out of those rape sims, talk to women like they’re human beings, take her to romantic locations or restaurant/dancing sims. Make some sort of mental connection with her. It may well lead to cyber-sex, and that’s OK. Spouting a whole stream of objectionable views while abusing her (and I don’t hold much enthusiasm for the argument that the female avatar is compliant…who knows if ‘she’ is being run by a male who runs that avatar as a means of reinforcing his own sordid fantasies?) is patently not OK.

I’m away beyond angry at my co-worker’s plight right now, away beyond angry that an asshole like Robin Thicke is making money with a message that ‘even when a girl says no, she might mean yes’, and take advantage of it. The celebration of this idiotic message helps reinforce, in men’s minds, the notion that spiking a girl’s drink, taking her to a hotel and assaulting or raping her is somehow right.

Howie.

Overcast skies, rain in the air, and some actual rain (not much) a couple of hours ago. As usual, I headed down to the beach first thing, and there was enough of a chill to discourage us from going naked. The sea looked inviting enough, but probably cold at this time of day, so we huddled together under and drank the cups of tea we took with us.

One hardier lady, a local, perhaps, suddenly appeared next to us, naked and holding an umbrella. 🙂 She, too, looked as if she was contemplating an early morning dip, but headed away shortly thereafter without venturing in. I just loved the juxtaposition of a naked woman with an umbrella, not wanting to get wet from the rain, but prepared to get wet in the sea. 🙂 A slightly surreal experience.

I’ve tinkered around with the sky and environment settings to give the photo a bit of a sense of ‘dark skies’.

Apologies, too, for yesterday’s ‘postcard’ only turning up this morning 🙂 We had a busy day catching up with old friends, and it was only this morning that I got yesterday’s ‘postcard’, our midnight dip, published.

Ella.

PS There may not be a postcard tomorrow, as we’re driving to the Alhambra, and intend to start early and spend a full day at a location it has been our intention to see for several years, but never actually done. And tomorrow’s the day! I may try to either get a postcard for Sunday published late tonight, or early tomorrow morning before we set out. Equally, I may not get the chance. 

Is anyone watching ‘Naked and Afraid‘ on the Discovery channel? I found it to be the most flimsy pretext for a TV show in the history of television. Two strangers, a man and a woman, are dumped somewhere ‘wild’ (just a short helicopter ride away from a doctor/hospital/5 star hotel) and asked to survive without anything, including clothes, for three weeks.

And then they broadcast with certain bits pixellated.

Which begs the question…why have nudity at all? Why not issue these modern day Tarzan and Janes with loincloths, at least. Oh, I know why! Gratutious, pixellated nudity for the sole, cynical purpose of drawing in a (male, teenage?) audience.

I watched some clips on the internet, and they suck. They suck, big time. The implied nudity may be great for 15 year old boys, but it seems that Discovery need to shy away from actual, real, genital exposing nudity. So you flip channels. And there’s real, unpixellated children suffering the effects of Sarin gas in Syria.

We surely do have some crazy values attached to television.

Pookes applies television’s fear of nudity to SLN 😦

Beyond that, the females seem to think their first priority is to fashion fig leaf bikinis which again begs the question ‘why not issue them in the first place?’.

All sorts of ludicrous ‘real survival’ arguments have been made by the producers who seem a bit too dim to have really thought it through. Chances are if you do end shipwrecked on a desert island, you’re gonna be wearing something. And even being able to utilise something like a belt, or a shirt fashioned into a hat to protect you from the sun are going to be a properly processed ‘real survival’ argument. No, ultimately, it’s all about (pixellated) tits on TV, all about a rotten concept making for rotten television.

Pookes.

Being from the relatively far north of the United Kingdom, I’m (now) used to the evenings stretching on until quite late on. In midsummer it’s pretty much light until beyond 11pm. People further south, even in the likes of London, don’t have that experience, with darkness descending much earlier. Of course, the nights are dropping down now, with 9pm being around the time the light has gone, and here in Spain it’s earlier than that. You can feel the light melting away from 8pm.

The pools at the various urbanizacions ‘close’ at 10pm, 8pm in the naturist hotel (when all nudity ceases too). While I do like to comply with the rules, I’ll work them to their limit 🙂 As a result we’re regular 9.45pm swimmers, lol, when you can float on your back and look up at a starlit sky, surely one of life’s magnificent experiences.

And what we find happens is that once we’ve made our presence felt in the pool (other guests can hear us swimming), they too are often emboldened enough to share that experience. We’ve regularly gone for a 9.45pm swim with the intention of  few quick lengths and out by 10.00pm, only to find that the pool is half-full in a short space of time, and we’re all still there at 10.30pm or 11.00pm!

We did once arrive near midnight, due to a late flight, and the first thing we opted to do was clothes off and into the pool for a midnight dip. Lovely, it was too.

Not quite midnight last night…we went for our 9.45pm swim (but I promise I’ll try and fit in an actual midnight dip, either at the pool or in the sea, before I go home and ‘postcard’ it).

Ella