Female or male? Animal or person? Why do I look like I do as an avatar?
In the article The Ideal Elf: Identity Exploration in World of Warcraft, Katherine Bessiere, A. Fleming Seay, and Sara Kiesler found that the avatars chosen by players have more favorable attributes than their own self-rated attributes.
Personally, I live with what I look like every day, just like the rest of the population of the world. Unlike the participants in Flemming, Seay and Kiesler's research, I wasn't interested in more favorable attributes than myself. I wanted a male avatar and to look as different as myself as possible. (As an aside, I took an internet test years ago to see if I have a male or female brain and found out that I have a male brain. That helped explain a lot about how everyone interacts with me - both men and women are confused!) But none of the looks I was presented appealed to me. I wanted my avatar to look as androgynous as possible. No androgynous choices except for the goth looks - mostly. The male goth had hair and clothes that didn't appeal but I could live with the female goth look, so I'm female. Maybe once I can manipulate how I look I'll change myself again.
The other part to wanting to look different is to see how others react and interact with my avatar Do looks really matter in a place like SL, like they do in First Life, or can you really look like anything you want with no discrimination for physical attributes? I'm betting that looks still matter and many of my recognition points when interacting with other avatars will be affected by looks to some extent. We'll see.
I thought for a long time about being a rabbit, but both the male and female rabbits were too steeped in North American male/female stereotypes.
Bessiere, Katherine, A. Fleming Seay, and Sara Kiesler. The Ideal Elf: Identity Exploration in World of Warcraft. CyberPsychology & Beharior, Volume 10, Number 4, 2007. (c)Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
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