Week Six: SecondLife, like high school but worse

Meet Petunia Pinion. I created her in early 2007 for my Communication & New Media course. Petunia was created in representation of, as Filiciak states, “a longed-for chance of expressing ourselves beyond physical limitations” (as quoted in Brookey & Cannon, pg. 149). Physical limitations constrain my ability to have purple skin, wings, or even purple hair (without the pricey process of bleaching and dyeing). Petunia represents me: her hair and skin represent my love affair with the color purple. Her tie-dyed shirt and bare feet represent my affinity for hippie culture. Her bright, defined eyes are testament to the fact that I believe eyes are our clue to whether or not we can trust someone. Her toile skirt is in homage to my obsession with toile fabric dating back to early episodes of “Trading Spaces.” She wears a bracelet because I love bracelet but find them cumbersome in real life. And her wings inspire me to fly (though, Petunia doesn’t need wings to fly). In other words, Petunia represents everything about me that I cannot—she is the liberated Renee.

For my senior comprehensive project in undergrad, I chose to do an autoethnographic analysis of hegemonic hypersexuality in SecondLife. I was less a participant and more of an observer. However, I found Petunia garnered too much attention to be a fly on the wall. In any social space, Petunia regularly received remarks about her appearance, and occasionally others would chat about “the purple fairy” as though she weren’t even there.

I knew she wouldn’t do for my study.

Meet Sheri Merryman, a name inspired by Sherry Turkle. She’s about as bland and uninteresting an avatar can be. She was my eyes and ears into the hegemonic representations of avatars in SecondLife. Rarely did anyone speak to her. I was disappointed to shelve Petunia for the sake of the study, but her appearance was too engaging, lending credence to the fact that women’s bodies are on display to be remarked on and spoken about. Non-hegemonic representations of identity are disciplined, reminding me of high school.