Wagner James Au / New World Notes

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Damaged Avatars: Style Choice, or Expressions of RL Sadism/Self-Harm/Misogyny?

Avatar scars damageAbove: From my 2010 post, "Sexy Scarface: The Story Behind 'Broken Hearts Bleed', the Latest in Stylishly Brutalized Female Avatar Skins"

Really interesting /SecondLife Reddit thread about the prevalence of avatars who are physically damaged in some way:

My daughter, who does not play Second Life, asked me about the prevalence of avatars showing body damage. Band-aids, bloody noses, cuts, scrapes, bruises, etc. It's so common on SL but I honestly never put much thought into the "why".

She hypothesized it is "representative of internal real life feelings". I said it seems to be the current fad and may not have any deep meaning. It's just a "thing" these days.

It's actually been fairly popular pretty much when it was possible. This from my 2010 post on the topic:

As you might expect, it's provoked some controversy among SL fashionistas. After all, you look at a woman with a heart gashed into her face, and you wonder how it got there, maybe imagining a man hovering over her with a razor.

However, [creator]Mochi tells me her motive for making it had nothing to do with that… she meant it as a metaphorical expression of how she feels right now.

"I've been experiencing some problems lately in real life," she says, "but I try to pretend that nothing is wrong, by keeping a smile on my face. I guess the heart skin supposedly is expressing how hurtful the things I've experienced lately are, appearing in physical form on the face…"

More here, with many SLers talking about it as a style choice, especially when default avatars are so perfect. Others suggest there's a misogynist intent. The answer is probably both these motivations and more exist and vary from avatar to avatar.

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2 responses to “Damaged Avatars: Style Choice, or Expressions of RL Sadism/Self-Harm/Misogyny?”

  1. M. Avatar
    M.

    Every reading, of every text (meaning anything that you can derive meaning from, not just words), depends on the reader’s perspective, knowledge, experience, values, beliefs, and even whether they have a stomach ache at the moment! Your reading of a text today will likely be different from the one you make next week. There is no ‘one’ reading. ‘Meaning’ is the prerogative of the end-user and end-reader, even if the author of the text, or creator of the item, ‘meant’ it differently. Having said that, the author/creator is also always a reader and user.

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  2. Gwyneth Llewelyn Avatar
    Gwyneth Llewelyn

    I have no real opinion on this issue… I can only say that, outside Halloween, you won’t see my avatar with bruises and blood on her face — but that’s my option, of course.
    I agree with “M.” above. You can see your avatar as an artistic, creative expression of yourself; and as such, whatever the artist meant is not necessarily what the viewer interprets, since both may have different backgrounds, different knowledge, culture, beliefs and so forth. There may be something about avatars looking often “too perfect” (that’s why I love skins which have freckles and pores!). As for the “misogynist intent”, I wonder… don’t male avatars use the same kind of skins/tattoos? At least that’s what I see on the Marketplace pictures — these items are being often sold for both genders, after all.

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