Second Life Firsts

My first real attempt at exploring second life took place on Monday night for about an hour. First of all I was extremely confused by everything that was going on. Apparently there are beginner’s worlds that I did not enter at first, and the first world that I entered no one spoke English. Finally, I was able to enter a world called the island, which was supposed to be focused on new comers. However, as soon as I teleported to the island everyone seemed to know each other. One man tried to make conversation with me, but as soon as he learned that I was working on a school project he teleported somewhere else. It really wasn’t that easy entering this virtual world.
Second life is by far is more complicated than I would have ever thought. Even entering the beginner’s world leaves a lot to be explained. Most of the time I spent trying to figure out how to change my outfit and look so it somewhat resembled me. Finally after creating an acceptable outfit, I tried to search different places to teleport. I decided that the search button was probably my best bet, but when entering searches such as ‘University’ and ‘college’, I received search results back such as sorority sluts and role play, definitely not where I wanted to be. Eventually I found another search engine that showed popular places that were all PG in ratings, and I ended up in Stanford’s library. By this point in the night I was over Second Life and logged off.
Even entering as a new comer I understand that sexuality plays a big part in this world. When searching different “hot spots” and worlds I discovered most involved sex/stripping/etc. In an online world such as second life it is easier for individuals to act differently than they would in normal life. Therefore, people may be willing to act in ways that are not accepted in their everyday world, whether it is a man using an avatar that is of a woman or even women dressing extremely provocatively. For example, even in the few worlds that I have entered there have been women dressed as vampires and in all sorts of strange clothes. In Second Life it seems that most women are dressed very scantily, and I in my black pants and white shirt, was definitely out of place.
I definitely noticed that most women had large breasts, tiny wastes, and long pretty hair. In this virtual world, women are able to create themselves to look exactly the way they wished they could look in real life. I think virtual worlds like second life are a great way for us to look at what is considered beautiful in our society. Of course there are those off beat individuals, who would prefer to take on the avatar of a wizard, but for the most part I think people portray themselves as what they think society thinks is beautiful. Therefore there are a lot of super skinny, big busted, blond women and tall, muscular men. I wonder who is really hiding behind those ridiculously good looking avatars?