There’s a Gangsta Fair going on in SL right now, with all of the usual ‘in character’ clothes, poses and so on being blogged on the SL blogosphere.

Guns are included. No one on the blogosphere appears to be pixellating them.

I’m not sure what your take on it may be, but my view is that a glamorisation of guns is rather more offensive than the blogging of nipples, or genitalia. It’s likely that most bloggers won’t necessarily think in these terms, and that’s fine, but from my perspective there’s a hierarchy of offensive stuff, and guns (as well as BDSM, ‘subservient Gorean female’ poses and so on) are up there. Genitals wouldn’t even make my list. We’ve all got them, one of two basic models. It’s part of the human condition. Why do we remain so afraid of them? Even in the SL blogosphere.

Bloggers might say ‘we have an audience, including teenagers, we must protect’. From what? A basic model of the human form, one of which they’ll have seen looking in a mirror, the other they’ll almost certainly have viewed on the internet, if not in real life. Censoring the human body while normalising guns, or BDSM equipment or subservient female poses? It doesn’t, for me, make any sense.

Pookes

The Woodstock generation appeared to have a relaxed attitude to ‘clothing optional’ when not wearing their tie-dyes.

The prize at Madcap Creations, as part of the Vintage Hunt ongoing right now is a tie-dye and patched jeans ensemble (L$1).

So if I get around to attending tonight (my first Woodstock Wednesday if I do) what better to wear than some good old hippy wear?

The outfit is supposed to be a man prize but, hey, I think it looks great on girls too!

Pookes

Something that is vexing a lot of people at the moment in the UK is a series of posters on the London Underground enquiring if you/we are feeling as if we’re ‘beach body ready’.

Immediately, some women took offence. Quite rightly so, in my view.

We’re all beach body ready. All the time. We need to learn to be content within our own skins and not pandering to what is often an unrealistic, unobtainable ‘ideal’ as portrayed by the beauty business.

A campaign is underway to have the posters removed on the basis that they are “targeting individuals, aiming to make them feel physically inferior to the unrealistic body image of the bronzed model, in order to sell their product.”

Up to a point, they’re correct. I don’t think that the model shown is ‘unrealistic’ (although it might be interesting to learn just how much photoshopped she is), but I take the point that it’s only a campaign to shift a product, which may or may not work, and at the end of April, even if it does work, isn’t going to produce a figure like the model portrayed in time for July/August.

The key to a ‘beach body’ is staying off junk food, tucking into fruit and veg, and doing a lot more exercise than most of us already do. Of course, the work environment, sedentary jobs stuck at computer terminals with unsociable hours that mean the gym is potentially closed by the time we clock off, doesn’t help.

I can’t really judge objectively, as the world of slimming products is wholly alien to me, so in a sense I don’t even know what they do and how they do it, in terms of aiding weight loss, so I’m not going to get into slagging off a product of which I’ve no particular knowledge.

I will, however, suggest that it’s further evidence of a beauty industry, or health industry, becoming more in-your-face in the way that they promote their wares, some of which (and this isn’t aimed at the company involved here which, as I’ve said, I’ve no knowledge) is snake oil.

The ad campaign, ridiculed and parodied by many on social media.

Other posts on this blog suggest that Second Life clothes designers often buy into this same ‘beauty myth’; it has become something of a regular bugbear of ours at SLN in recent weeks, and while we’re not encouraging a sedentary, unhealthy lifestyle, and would countenance the need for exercise and healthy eating, we do feel that it’s incumbent on SL’s designers not to perpetuate the myths perpetuated by the RL fashion industry by downsizing mesh clothes to underline the fact that, for all sorts of reasons, people are of different sizes and SL needs to recognise this.

Ella

Once upon a time, people got famous for doing stuff. Discovering penicillin. Writing ‘Sergeant Pepper’. Creating the greatest body of literature in the English language and, possibly, all literature. Discovering places. Inventing things.

Now? You get famous for a sex tape. And make millions from it.

And then you make the remainder of your K-K-K family famous by dragging them along in your wake.

Finally, someone called Disick (the ‘is‘ in the middle are pronounced silently) reaches the very nadir of ‘fame’. The ‘celebrity for being a celebrity’ culture reaches rock bottom.

So it’s good to see the Huffington Post go into bat on behalf of adult women everywhere. For independently thinking women everywhere.

Not what a bush looks like naturally

Ella

British singer Jamelia has caused a bit of a stir in the UK press this week by declaring on TV that women of plus sizes would not be able to buy fashionable clothes on the High Street.

Jamelia, not dressed up to pander to male fantasy.

“I don’t believe stores should stock clothes below or above a certain weight,” she said on Tuesday. “They should be made to feel uncomfortable when they go in and can’t find a size.”

She added: “I do not think it’s right to facilitate people living an unhealthy lifestyle.”

Cue a bomb going off! She then defended the comments on another television programme, saying she stood by them in the eye of a social media storm against her.

Jamelia, feminist icon and powerful woman doing things on her own terms, obviously. With a bunny rabbit.

Of course, during the second TV appearance, which involved tears, she said she was ‘misquoted’, despite the storm raging against her being based solely on her own words.

“Knowing I offended people really upset me,” she said. “But I do stand by what I said – I am a real women with real opinions… I get paid to voice my opinion. Occasionally you offend people.”

Of course you can offend people every time you speak, put pen to paper or whatever, and I’m actually often in favour of that rather than us all live in some politically correct cocoon. But the ‘real opinion’ expressed simply wasn’t very well thought through. Not unexpected from yet another of these ‘pop stars’ with a shelf life marginally shorter than a pint of milk and is thus described on wikipedia as a singer-songwriter, model, entertainer, television presenter, and actress. So many skills! I think we need a phrase to cover these multi-talented (that’s sarcasm, folks) women who do so much so well. Hey, and we’ve not even mentioned she’s a Mum as well. What a role model!

So let’s keep the fat people invisible, yes? Let’s body shame them regarding their size, yes? Let’s maintain the beauty myth perpetuated by the media and beauty industries, yes?

The British press has responded with numerous columns broaching the subject, reminding her that being plus sized is not solely down to taking no exercise and wolfing down junk food.

Of course, this is simply another example of the beauty myth to which women are subjected day in, day out and if it hadn’t been her, it would probably have been another ‘celebrity’ voicing the same view.

And then there’s Second Life, which in its own way pursues that same Jamelia agenda.

Mesh clothes. In the days before mesh clothes fitted perfectly, regardless of the avatar’s size. Since mesh’s arrival it has long appeared that the land of the perpetually young and beautiful are being channelled down a ‘perpetually slim’ route too.

To be fair, Jamelia did include both extremes of size, larger women as well as thinner women who are damaging their own health in pursuit of extreme thinness, another thing perpetuated by the fashion industry. She didn’t just limit her remarks to bigger ladies.

In a sense, Second Life’s clothes designers are even worse than real life clothes designers. Mesh clothes come in six sizes. XXS, XS, S, M, L, XL, although it’s usually only five sizes by gender. Men’s clothes run from XS to XL, while women’s run fro XXS to L, an issue that has caused some debate within SL community forums.

Note the emphasis towards the ‘S’ end of the spectrum where women are concerned.

More than 2/3rds of American women are, apparently, considered to be obese. The figures for the UK parallel the American experience.

Yes, I know and understand that SL is a fantasy world. That we don’t have to be who we are in RL. But this pressure towards the lower end of the size spectrum is, in my view, unrealistic. While the RL fashion industry seems to already force unrealistic expectations on women, body shaming, as Jamelia has done, the SL fashion industry is doing the same and is perhaps more culpable in this respect. XXS?????

I have a slim, possibly marginally underweight avatar in SL reflecting a slim, possibly marginally underweight RL me. And yet my avatar can certainly wear an ‘M’ or ‘S’ size with mesh clothes.

XS? XXS? To do that is forcing SL’s women to do that ‘instantaneous diet’ thing they can do with avatar appearance slider controls, to buy into unrealistic expectations. If SL avatars lived and breathed, we’d have a growth industry in SL medical facilities because, trust me, these avatars wouldn’t function healthily.

And where is XXL in ladies’ SL mesh? Some SL females can and do run ‘plus size’ avatars, but I suspect they aren’t always able to get the mesh clothes to fit. Following Jamelia’s example, what should designers do? Show these on Marketplace, while keeping the trimmer sizes for their smoked glass and brushed aluminium showrooms?

Prior to mesh, clothes simply fitted, regardless of avatar size. Since mesh, it seems to me that SL clothes designers now buy into the (male dominated) beauty myth.

Ella

Canary Beck has an article on her blog about ‘dress codes’ which is, as usual with Canary’s work, an excellent read.

But Canary’s travails with trying to establish a dress code at her sim, Basilique, meeting with resistance, to say the least, got me thinking about similar issues on SL’s naturist sims.

I’ve written about this before, with sims sometimes feeling invaded by those who make no indication that they’re ever going to clamber out of their clothes.

It’s not just a problem limited to one or two naturist sims, but all of them. Unless there’s a sim officer present, reminding visitors of the dress code in place, then people will simply stand around, dressed, in what can often creepily seem like those who visit RL naturist beaches, young males mostly, without having any intention of removing their shorts.

Spanish naturists will take matters into their own hands. If a group of young males do decide to visit the naturist beach and remain dressed, Spanish naturists will begin slow-handclapping them until, shamed, they either undress or flee. In my experience it’s usually the latter. I don’t particularly like it, but I recognise it has to be done, otherwise we reach a point where the ‘purity’ of naturist beach gets diluted. The Spanish response is ‘we’ve got maybe 20kms of naturist beach along the country’s entire coastline, so respect that we want to keep it that way, you in your board shorts have several thousand beaches you can merrily attend, and one not a kilometre from here. So go there’. A robust Spanish response means that naturist beaches remain naturist and not subjected to textile creep.

I tp’ed into one naturist sim earlier today to find six avatars at the central tp point to conduct a little experiment. Of the six of us, four females were dressed, myself included, I wanted to see if I did get a gentle reminder of dress code if any officer was present. Two in bikinis, and two of us fully dressed. Of the two males present, one was fully dressed and the other was one of those beautiful specimens who appears to be colour blind when it comes to matching genitalia colour to skin tone.

Did anyone make any move to undress? No.

Look, the dress code is ‘naked’. Is there any chance people could respect that? Or leave?

Where sim officers are present I have to say that they can be very good in ensuring the dress code remains ‘naked’. In RL the French beach of Arnaoutchot has its own ‘nude police’ who man the beach entrance and insist on any form of clothing being removed prior to entry to the beach. Yes, you probably needed your shorts to drive to the beach, and may still be wearing them when you walk from the car to the beach, but the nude police ensure the shorts come down before you go down to the sea.

I’ve encountered similar in SL, and have been IM’ed about dress code at ‘7 Hills’ and ‘Naked’ to remind me that they’re naturist sims. Sometimes this occurs before I or the geography around me has fully rezzed. I don’t get into a flap about it. ‘Yes, I know’, I’ll respond, adding a smile before my avatar peels off unwanted layers. Should I do a little foot-stomping and scream ‘I’m the editor of SL Naturist!!!! I bet I spend more time naked on the grid than you do, you little jobsworth!!!!’? No. I offer a verbal nod in the direction of the avatar officiating and comply – I was going to comply the instant I got a full rezz anyway – and offer a word of thanks. They’re only doing what’s necessary to enhance my enjoyment of SL.

So it should be elsewhere. Should I tp into Canary’s Basilique sim, nude, and if asked to dress say ‘I’m the editor of SL Naturist. We naturists have rights!!!!!!’? No, of course not. If we, SL’s naturist community, want to be shown respect, we need to provide it too. So a few clothes on for the trip to any non-naturist sim is perfectly fine by me.

In a reply to Canary’s post, I said that dressing up can be a lot of fun too. Our ‘naturist wardrobe’ postings replicate RL naturism. There’s nothing naturists like better than to get dressed up in an evening, which is why Pookes and I reflect RL naturist etiquette and manners with those types of posts. Indeed, even from a blogging perspective, there’s a lot of fun to be had looking at an item on the grid and saying ‘perfect for the naturist evening!’ And if you think there’s something wrong with that, you simply don’t fully comprehend the fullness of the naturist lifestyle. If we as a community lack any sort of exhibitions tendencies by day, by evening we naturist ladies like to step out, dressed up, looking a million dollars. It’s a theme that’s as common in naturism as carrying a towel to sit on.

Caity, over on the Cait’s World blog, clearly has found the issue of dress code as irritating to her SL as ‘textile creep’ is to mine!

I think that we’re all kind of united in our belief that wherever you go in SL, be it a club, a nude beach, a historical sim, land belonging to ‘furries’, Gorean role-play, you will enhance the SL experience for others, and particularly yourself, by dressing the part. So c’mon people….if you’re visiting naturist sims, be nude. Otherwise, don’t visit.

Ella