As I stated in my last blog entry, all the Barbie avatars have the same bodies. The bodies have curvaceous hips and noticeable breast. Since the site is only for girls, there are no Ken avatars to interact with. But sexuality can still be seen, even in a room full of girls. As a non-VIP there are obviously limited options for clothing, and I believe I had about 5 options to pick from as bottoms. There were two pair of bell 'bottomish' jeans, which were the only pants, a pair of 'capris' and a knee length skirt or a mini skirts. The mini skirt being exceptionally short for a young girl to be wearing in real life, or the option of a sleeveless dress, which ended up being about the same length as the mini skirt. When picking a top to pair with the pants there is only one way not to have your mid drift showing and the is if you pick the dress, which is extremely short. This was not something I noticed right away, but after changing my outfit a couple times and looking for areas where sexuality can be noticed I realized you had to show some skin. This is teaching young girls it is alright to have your stomach or some skin showing, which is a negative because it is really not okay to do that, especially as a young girl and is pretty much promoting looking 'sexy' or 'hot'.
When picking out your facial features I was a little surprised/disturbed. The options for eyes all have pretty heavy make up on and the default color given is blue. The lips you had to choose from were all pretty seductive, with one of them appearing to be in a 'ring' or making a 'kissy' face or god knows what. There were 4 color options for lip stick, one of them being nude, the others dark red or dark purple, or a slightly lighter shade of purple. Showing facial features only which were decked out in make up is showing young girls that it is okay to wear drag make up to enhance yourself.
One of the last themes containing sexuality were the girls being able to go in each other's bed rooms. I thought it was pretty strange that I could walk up to a virtual girl I just friend requested and we could go off and hang out in her bed room. If I had VIP status I would have been able to be in a fashion show, which is judged by the other girls. I thought this tied in with sexuality because the winners of the fashion shows were mostly the ones with the least amount of clothing on. I think if i had been in another Virtual World, besides Barbie girls, which is geared towards younger girls, I would have seen much worse stunts dealing with sexuality, than an overly glammed out Barbie doll.
Class Question: How prevalent was sexuality in your virtual world? If it was prevalent and pervasive, Why do you think people feel the need to create avatars and act sexually inappropriate online?
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