Naked Truth

In a recent blog post, sian asked 'how nude can an avatar get?', and then 'does it matter?' That wasn't throwaway rhetoric on her part, and she explained her reason for asking in the subsequent line: 'our identities are mutable.'

I asked exactly the same question - 'does it matter?' - in a post I wrote on this blog in June, and concluded, a little uneasily, that for reasons I couldn't wholly put my finger on, the nudity of my avatar did matter. It does matter. And it matters moreso now than it did in June because the pictures in that post featured an un-naked Kitti, wearing a skin that was beautiful but which appeared to be made of porcelain. In the picture in this post, Kitti is wearing her everyday non-porcelain skin, and combined with Second Life's advanced rendering and lighting settings, it looks all too real. And, of course, this time Kitti is naked.

 But this brings us back to sian's first question- 'how nude can an avatar get?'. Whilst Kitti might not be wearing clothes in this picture, she is not naked in terms of avatar-nakedness. She is wearing mesh hands and feet, hair, eyelashes, eyes, skin, and a body shape. It is impossible for an SL avatar not to have a shape and a skin and eyes - those are a given, simply part of the way SL works - but I have chosen to put on everything else. 

And why have I chosen to include these 'wearable' items in my attempt at a tasteful nude of my SL avatar? Because these are the things which allow the picture to be about Kitti's nakedness. Without them, it would be impossible, after the initial oh-she's-naked, not to notice the unreality of Kitti's virtual body. Her blocky hands and strangely triangular feet would act as a barrier between the point of the picture and the viewer (and so would her baldness, but that's mostly because Kitti doesn't look good bald). They would serve to alienate, in more ways than one, her nudity, perhaps offering it up instead as a critique of Linden Lab's graphic skills. 

Don't get me wrong; the supposed reality of this image could also be used to offer a critique of Linden Lab's graphic skills, and a whole lot more besides, but that it not its primary purpose.

This isn't the picture that I wanted to take. I wanted to take a nude photo which revealed precisely nothing, but avatar limbs don't always play ball, and finding poses that weren't uncompromising in one way or another was impossible. Whilst I didn't want Kitti to be flashing her bits, so to speak, I didn't want her to be actively hiding them either. I didn't want her posed with the intention of being seductive, nor did I want her nudity to seem like a mistake. This turned out to be quite a tall order, and in the end, I felt forced to compromise, although I did so on my own terms. 

Posting this picture here is still something of an ordeal for me, and I still cannot put my finger on why exactly. Perhaps it is partially because, as I began to say in my original post (link at the end), Kitti acts as my medium in the virtual world, and her body is the only body many will ever come to associate with me (That I could change everything about the way she looks the moment I released the picture into the world, making the photographed body no longer even exist, is not the point). Whilst she speaks with my voice and shares my thoughts and opinions, and whilst I have always acknowledged the differences between my avatar and my self, her nakedness is a kind of honesty I have not yet ventured to share. Would her nudity be so important to me if that gap between us was greater, or if the truth of it was not so broadly known? Would I feel so uncomfortable if I wasn't going to post a link to this blog post on my Facebook profile where it will be seen by people I am friends with in both lives?

The picture I mentioned in the opening paragraph of my June post has never been posted. It is buried, as it were, in a folder on my laptop, and there it remains. It might seem strange not to post it now, along with this picture, but the truth is that Kitti's pose in that image is far more revealing. When I published that post, there were no rallying cries, no pledges of support, no encouragement to post the image if that was what I wanted to do. There was no conversation at all. Whilst that might be the reaction I was expecting, I don't suppose it was the one I was hoping for.

I'm going to see sian's questions, and raise her a couple: What does it really mean to be naked in SL? Is nudity in the virtual world measured by how many clothes we are wearing, or by how honest we are about our real and virtual selves? How naked is your avatar now?

Related/further reading: my original post, 'Stripped' / sian's post, 'Naked' / 'the intrepid reporter on: nakedness'

Stripped

I've been finding more and more lately that I'm photographing Kitti wearing fewer and fewer clothes.

Upon my request, Sian Pearl made these wonderful bracers (full mech arms make me nervous), and when I came to photograph them, I found that they actually looked best when Kitti wasn't wearing anything else at all. "I'm going to take this picture," I said to Sian, "And then bury it." I knew I had to have something somewhere within my inventory to go with the bracers, and eventually I found it - though, admittedly, the outfit is still a little on the naked side. Somehow, posting the nude wasn't an option, despite the fact that it is still, even after I found an outfit I was happy with, a better photo.

Braced

A couple of weeks ago, I took photos of Kitti on the shore at Winter Moon wearing, once again, only a necklace and a pair of pointed elf ears. I wasn't trying to create a fantasy pin-up, only something that seemed ethereal and beautiful. I only shot from the waist up, and had to summon all of my bravery to post the pictures on Flickr (you can see them here - here!). When my mum saw the pictures (Hi Mum!), she posted a comment saying "Hmmm", and when I spoke to her on the telephone, I laughed, a little sheepishly, and asked if she disapproved. I can't remember what her exact words were, but they were basically to the effect that it was unlike me to post images like that. When I told her how difficult I'd found posting them, she laughed and asked why - "it's not your real body, it doesn't matter!"

Does it matter? I think it does. This is the only body that many people are ever going to associate with me, and I'm not sure that I want to show all of it to everyone. On the other hand, why should I hide my body, virtual or tangible? Is my reticence based on archaic, patriarchal, Adam-and-Eve-esque self and sex shame? Is nakedness reserved only for sex and porn, and thus can I only be naked when I intend to arouse? Is there something wrong with wanting to take pictures that do or do not arouse the viewer? Can I not be naked for the sake of being naked? Is my picture somehow lesser if I want it to arouse you? Is my nakedness a gift I can only give to a few before it gets worn out?

I don't think that the pictures I took at Winter Moon are particularly arousing, and when I took Kitti's clothes off this morning and realised she looked beautiful and powerful and vulnerable all just as she was, it wasn't to create an image that I would label as pornographic. I appreciate that this is the internet, and Rule 34 of the Internet states that if you can think of it, there is porn of it, and I accept that arousing images and pornography are subjective. What I am trying to say it that creating something pornographic was not my intention. Can I honestly say, however, that I didn't want Kitti to look sexy? That I didn't want her to look beautiful? No. I wouldn't even try. It pleased me that Kitti looked beautiful, and, as I have said, strong and vulnerable all at once. Combined with that Jessica Rabbit -esque hairstyle, Kitti did look sexy.

The atmosphere of the naked picture is soft, and I could imagine that it was taken mid-stride as Kitti made her way over to a wardrobe to don the rest of her gear. In the images I have posted here, I tried to keep that strong/vulnerable aesthetic, but I lost that sense of movement, of direction, of intent in the bargain. Kitti's lacking attire is now on purpose, her outfit already complete, and it looks as if she has paused to consider something, rather than having been caught mid-stride. The tunic with its red buttons forced me to bring more colour into the picture, tying in the red with the blue that had previously been the focus of the picture. Now the blue pops because the red makes it - which, don't get me wrong, I love, but it all adds up to make a different photo. And has, arguably, a much more sexual agenda.

Braced II

All because I didn't think it was right to post a picture of my virtual body naked on the internet.

Feminism isn't, truly, about papering the streets with images of the naked female body and expecting everybody to simultaneously notice and appreciate but not be aroused, and just accept it. Sometimes, I think the feminist message gets confused in that way, and it's not helpful for anybody. Feminism is about having a choice, and being able to make it and have others judge you on the merits of you and the choice, not their pre-defined idea of what you ought to do based on what you have between your legs. It is also about feeling confident and stable enough to defend your position when challenged, and to not let the opinions of others sway yours without your consent. If somebody else came to me with this conundrum, I would tell them to follow their instincts and their heart, and only do what made them comfortable. Whilst I don't think I am the kind of person that lets others beat me with pre-conceived notions about my gender, I don't know what makes me comfortable in this situation. I am stuck in a limbo between guilt and more guilt. 

And as you can see, I have not posted the picture here. Perhaps I will yet. I honestly do not know.

The Theft of a Virtual Body

Boo

I posted this on Flickr the other day, but decided it deserved a post of its own. Please click here - here! - to go and see the picture there.

Sian Pearl has been writing recently about the idea of pornography stealing the nude from art. You can read her post here - here! - and it's worth noting that some interesting ideas have emerged in the comments beneath the post. It has opened, I think, some interesting questions, but also made me think about a few things.

I don't take particularly provocative, shall we say, pictures of my avatar. I wouldn't say she dresses massively provocatively in the first place. Maybe the odd sci-fi outfit with a bare stomach or whatever. But this is about as naked as Kitti gets. 

I don't know why that is. I seem to hold the same rules about self nudity in SL as I do IRL (maybe with some lessening - I wouldn't wear those sci-fi outfits IRL! Though maybe I would if my RL body defied gravity the same way Kitti's does). That wasn't a conscious decision, just something I have gone along with. Maybe I should examine that.

So here. I tried it. I tried to be provocative, whilst only being as naked as I ever really am in SL. Maybe you could say the outfit in the previous picture (entitled Pearl House) is more revealing, but somehow this outfit feels more naked. 

I am, temporarily, stealing the (semi) nude from Sian Pearl, who is brave in all the ways that Kitti isn't. I also took this picture in her house, when she wasn't home, and she didn't actually know I was doing it - just so it felt like real theft :P

How to Ask for It

Loud enough?

Our clothes are asking for it. Loudly. They actually demanded it. They pointed at our half-naked bodies, gestured obscenely at our chests, thrust forward our groins, practically pushed us onto your prim cocks. They shouted: WE WANT YOU TO HAVE SEX WITH US - RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We dare you

I think not.

As ever with this blog, I have written about this topic before. Here and here (sort of) and here and here. But here I am with another slightly different angle to dissect the topic and try to get the best look at what is really going on, here. 

Sian Pearl is a parthenoid (this is best explained by her blog). She has a very specific aesthetic, well-cultivated and, okay, whilst it isn't always to my taste, it is well thought-out and considered and carefully pieced together. But recently, her developed sense of self has taken a bit of a knock, and she has been considering dropping her image in favour of jeans and jumpers. Well...that's fine, if it's what she wants - only, it isn't what she wants. What Sian wants is...okay, I imagine, a little bit of a wow factor. She wants to be attractive, I'm sure. But she also wants to be taken seriously. And questioned. And interacted with - not just prepositioned. And, if you will forgive me for being crude, not just turned into a fetish object and/or masturbated over. That such happens is not beyond Sian's comprehension. She has known this since day one. But the onslaught has reached such a point that she feels uncomfortable. And that just...isn't on.

What's to be done?

As I have said...Sian knows that by dressing this way, she is allowing a handful of people to view her as a fetish object. To use her flickr stream as self-pleasuring material. If I was more popular on flickr, I might be concerned that some of Kitti's latest pictures might be used in the same way. There is an understanding that dressing this way attracts such attention. But does that mean Sian shouldn't dress this way? Does that mean that I continue to dress as I do, the same fate awaits me?  Don't we have any control whatsoever over how we are viewed beyond our attire, and what the image we make can be used for?

There is a fine line between curiosity and voyeurism...

To what extent does the way we choose to dress act as a statement of intent? Without question, there are people, both in Second Life and the real world, that dress a certain way to suggest a certain desire, and that is not always a sexy desire.  We dress smartly in an office to be taken seriously. We go to comedy shows in our jeans to show that we're ready not to be taken too seriously. There are a thousand examples.

But how do we negotiate that? How do we work that out? It must, surely, get confusing for people contending with these issues. But that does not make it okay to presume. It does not make it okay to take images that aren't yours and use them for purposes other than what was intended - especially not without permission.

How do you work out what someone's intention is? I'll get to that in a second.

Here is a statement of my intent. Don't get it? Click here.

What this shouldn't lead to is a sense of fear. We shouldn't be afraid of each other. We shouldn't be afraid of each other's intentions and guessing them wrong. But that comes, I think, with a little intelligence, and some respect.

Respect really is the bottom line here. Having respect for others - enough, at the least, to ask somebody what their intentions are if you are unsure. In many roleplay situations in SL, roleplayers are asked to check via the private IM system before they do...well, anything!...with another avatar. It takes a heartbeat to check with someone if it's okay to attempt to engage their avatar in conversation, to start a confrontation, or to solicit them for sex. And, I imagine, most avatars are capable of answering you pretty succinctly. And if you're still unsure? Steer clear. Don't do it. And this is the same for outside of rp situations.

It comes back to that age-old battleground of "She Asked For It". Only, she didn't. We all know this - or, at least, we all should. There is only one way to ask for it. And I'm going to tell you How It's Done.

Are you ready? Are you going to write this down?

You open your mouth, and you bloody well ask for it. What your clothes are "saying" has absolutely nothing to do with it. I reiterate - I ask for it with my own mouth, not my attire.

Thank you to Sian Pearl for posing with me.

(ad)Mired

(ad)Mired

Since the holiday season is now over, I decided that I ought to begin the rather tedious task of sorting through three years of university work to figure out what needs keeping and what can hit the recycling bin. In my sorting through and ordering and filing, I came across a sheath of notes I had made about an article by Saba Mahmood, entitled Feminism, Democracy, and Empire: Islam and the War on Terror. Bear with me here.

What interested me and sparked the ideas for this post were two quotes I had quoted from the text, one of them which begins mid-sentence but still captures the point of the idea. It's important here to outline that I am not using these comments to talk about Islam or Muslim women - I am using them only for the ideas they spark about the world of Second Life. I am aware of the danger of using a text like that, but am not going to shy away from such things when it is possible that they have something important to say in another forum. I will put as full a citation as I can at the end of this post, so that should you wish to find the article for yourself and read it as it is, in its original context, you can do so. 

Quote one:

...securing the judgement that Islam's mistreatment of women is a symptom of a much larger pathology that haunts Islam - namely, its propensity to violence.

Quote two:

Women who contend that the veil is part of a religious duty, a divine edict, or a form of ethical practice are usually judged to be victims of a false consciousness, mired in a traditionalism that leads them to mistakenly internalise the opinions of misogynistic jurists whose pronouncements they should resist.

In a sense, it is pretty easy to modify both of these quotes to make them fit just about anything and any way of life that we might disagree with, but I think perceptions and, dare I say it, realities of Second Life have much in common with what Mahmood suggests is laid (unfairly) at Islam's feet. That misogyny exists in Second Life is without question, and I would not hesitate to suggest that SL also has a 'propensity to violence', be that because of its use as a sexual playground or because nobody wants to roleplay situations in which everybody is happy and safe and at peace with everyone else and themselves. That would be unimaginably dull, I'm sure, and largely useless to the world at large. 

But how do these quotes, in particular the second one, translate out of a question of what women might choose to wear within Islam, and into what women might choose to wear within Second Life? 

With equally dire ideas, it would seem. 

When I logged into SL a couple of nights ago, I was invited by a friend to join him in an apparently notorious space brothel bar (which shall, for the time being at least, remain nameless). There were a few other women there, also friends of his, and they were dressed in all manner of different outfits. He asked a couple of them if they would mind getting up and dancing around the poles that were there, for our entertainment. One chose to ignore him, but then, when another lady got up to dance, she gave in and joined in, too. I was not asked to dance, though whether that is because I had chosen a markedly unprovocative outfit that evening, or because I've said "no" every other time I have been asked, I cannot say for sure. But that I have to question says it all for me.

Can you see me now?

There you see the trappings of these ideas emerging. Dressed sedately in a space brothel bar, I felt that I would not have been asked to dance for their entertainment, whether I had said no before or not. Alongside some of the attire the other girls were wearing, I would be willing to bet money on that assumption. A judgement was made, by me and by them and by the friend asking the girls to dance for him, based on our attire.

Judged

What one chooses to wear, especially in Second Life where the avatar is often seen as a canvas for the expression of personality, has an impact on what other people think you are or want. A short skirt or a latex catsuit with artificial nipples sewn in says 'I am flirty and up for sex', whereas a roughspun tunic or a turtleneck jumper says 'I'm just here to be your friend'. If your hair is blue and your clothes are impossible-seeming or strange, you smack of fun and frolic and a good laugh, but if you choose to make your avatar an advocate of as-I-was-born 'normal' fashion, you're boring.

(pretty)Boring

But also, whether you dress in what might be deemed a sexually provocative way, or you dress like you know your grandma would want you to, you are stuck as Mahmood suggests women who wear the veil are stuck. Both choices describe a miring in traditionalism - a traditionalism based on the points of view of misogynists, who simultaneously expect you to be a sex goddess and a private possession, seen only by them, who should be dressed for home life. People make judgements about you without hanging around long enough to find out what you are really like, or what you really want - and whether or not your choices for your attire are based on your own, sound reasoning, or somebody else's imported logic.

I have no doubt that, to some extent, SL is guilty of hoading women who feel the need to dress a certain way because of a misogynistic viewpoint imported from the real life into the virtual - and I think that can work both ways, in terms of taking your clothes off or piling them on. But I also have no doubt that there are plenty of women dressing themselves in SL based upon their own carefully considered opinions and desires.Why is it assumed that people are incapable of such? - isn't that a kind of misogyny, too?

It is also ludicrous, in my opinion, to suggest that any visual aesthetic could tell wholly and completely the personalities and desires of anybody. A fun person might wish to have blue hair, but that doesn't mean that everyone with blue hair is fun and un-serious. A short skirt doesn't automatically say 'I WANT SEX', and a plain white shirt is not akin to stamping the word 'ASEXUAL' across your forehead. Looking good and/or sexy isn't an invitation to sex anymore than looking scruffy and dirty is an automatic denounciation of it.

And here is where the 'propensity to violence' really comes in. In the quote about Islam, the idea that isolated cases indicates a sense of the whole is completely, completely unfair. But in Second Life, it doesn't quite seem to work that way. Because if you think these are things that only become relevant in notorious space brothel bars, you would be mistaken. This is something that chases all of us across the grid every time we log into SL. And as a testament to that, when a complete strange told me on a public sim a little while back that she thought I looked good, not only was I desperately surprised that she'd even noticed my sedate little avatar, but she felt the need to go to great lengths to tell me that she wasn't trying to chat me up or anything. I thought that was a little weird at the time, but then, stood in that space brothel bar, if someone had done the same, wouldn't I have run a mile?

It's a kind of violence, this. Because of the way we understand semiotics in relation to our patriarchal - and until very recently, really, our very decidedly misogynistic - society, a simple compliment can be perceived as an act of violence. Going out naked in SL and not engaging in sex becomes violence. Covering yourself up becomes a defense against expected violence. And it is so, so wrong.

It seems like such an obvious thing to say, and yet I have struggled with the wording of this post, read it over and over again, worrying that somehow, I haven't quite hit the nail on the head. This is going to sit uncomfortably within me now because I am not sure that I have phrased it correctly. But I felt the need to say something.

Why is this such a mire?

[Mahmood citation: "Chapter 8 - Feminism, Democracy, and Empire: Islam and the War on Terror" by Saba Mahmood, in Gendering Religion and Politics - Untangling Modernities ed. by Herzog and Braude.]

Teaser

So, I'm going to be straight up with you: I am not feeling my best. It is only a cold, but I'm tired and my brain seems to be a little addled. I managed to lose my student card in the library today, which wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't used it to get into the library in the first place. I need my card to check books out, and to exit the library - so that was a fun experience, let me tell you! 

Onto the SL stuff: I had it in my head that I had read a fantastic piece about nudity in relation to comic book characters and how suggestive nudity is relative. Clear as mud, I know. Allow me to explain.

The idea is that, if you are used to seeing someone completely covered up, the slip of a bare shoulder, or a flash of ankle, becomes much more provocative and flirtatious than a semi-naked character becoming nude. It comes, I suppose, from the allure of the unknown, and wanting something that you potentially cannot have. There is also a shock, I think, created by being given an image of somebody that in some way does not adhere to the usual image you have of them in your mind. You are being forced to acknowledge that person in a new way - forced to look at them in a different way - and that multiplication of contexts, if you like, can be intriguing. You've been given a teaser and you want to know more and the same goes, I suppose, for the exposition of a freckled shoulder or curve of calf muscle.

This is not an idea adhered to often in Second Life, at least in my experiences. There is the question, as ever, as to why a person should feel the need to cover their body, and I am certainly not an advocate for closeting people, especially women, away because something they are wearing (or not wearing) might be deemed sexually provocative or revealing. We shouldn't be ashamed of our bodies. On the other hand, that doesn't necessarily mean that I want to be introduced to your virtual vagina by your skirt-belt and lacking underwear. There is a time and a place for that kind of thing. As you might remember, I was confronted with this issue on my first outing in SL (if you don't remember, click here) in a space that I did not expect to be, though the outcome was more amusing than anything else. 

I appreciate that, in SL especially, people have the right to exercise their free will (to a certain extent - sim owners still have control over what happens on their land!), but I would perhaps urge people to consider how they are using their bodies, and to what effect. Maybe this isn't a message that I really ought to be giving out, but (I think) all of my readers are adults, and you can handle it. If you are trying to manipulate the response of others, using your body as a weapon to attain something, even if only attention, be smart about it.

If after consideration, full nudity is still what you want to go for, then that's just fine.

Did it work here? Ah, possibly not. 

Newbs and Nudity

As I've already posted two pretty heavy blog entries in as many days, I figured I should provide a little light entertainment - so here I am.

I am not "new" on the Internet, as it were. We got our first PC with a connection to the Internet when I was eleven, and I used to use my one hour of net time a night to post text-based roleplays (usually in the world of Harry Potter, do not judge me) on MSN forums. Remember when they were cool? No? Never mind. After that, I joined some other fantasy-based forums, and then ran my own. If you are unfamilar with the world of text-based RPs, I'd probably advise you to steer clear. For every decent writer you find, you find a weird who keeps his dead ex-wife in the cupboard. What I'm trying to get across is that I'm not a stranger to the weird and wonderful collection of items and people on the web - and doesn't everyone now know that the web is really for cat videos, emo poetry and porn? - but I was shocked to see my avatar appear in the Second Life for the very first time beside this:

Can't see it properly? Click to enlarge. Lol.

I think TraciAnne, the not-yet-loaded-white-circle hit the nail on the head. HAVE YOU NOT HEARD OF CLOTHES, MAN?!

The worst/funniest thing is that, as you can see from my avatar, the default skin SL provides cannot be made to be naked. You have to download extras skins from the Second Life marketplace for that. And I just realised that he is wearing a pair of white sandals. What is this man doing?! This is the Welcome Area. Right there, you can see the not-yet-loaded bee I mentioned earlier. This is not how I expected to be welcomed! I think this guy had decided what he wanted out of SL right from the off...I just wish he hadn't felt the need to enlighten all of us newbs, too...

I'll no doubt find some reason to refer to this horrific incident later.