I'm Easily Annoyed

Kathy gothed



Mandy/Debbie/Tammy/Kandace/Whatever

I've made many avatars and tinkered with them in the almost two years I've been in Second Life. And I've picked up some freebie shapes. The problem with the shapes you get is that a) the breasts are too large and don't seem to be subject to Newtonian Law and b) the legs and arms are too skinny. You want to force-feed them cookies.
I set out to make an avatar that would look more normal, normal in the sense of not being from the cover of a sword and sorcery fantasy paperback, anyway. So I made Kathy. Not quite the Kathy you see at the top. She had more color in her and ... the hair from the avatar below her. Looking at her reminded me of a good friend from Lexington and, keeping with my obsession with the letter K, I named her Kathy. Kathy, the girl next door. Then I read about this freebie hair (along with a dozen or so other freebies) and slapped it on her. The tan didn't look so good anymore. I pulled out some goth skins I normally have no use for but hadn't deleted. A lip ring to top it all off ... and I fell in love. Something about the hair. More about lovin' the hair later.

I read about some people who fattened their avatars for a social experiment like the one we did with Grizzy. In fact, some normally fat avs went thin for the Grizzy experiment. Their biggest problem was just like in RL, trying to find clothes that fit. And clothes that had textures that didn't get all stretched out yucky. I decided that I needed a fatvatar and then promptly forgot about it.

Kathy was getting attention. She was getting attention that Lludmila never got. Kathy pulled. This was thrilling (who isn't happy to get attention?), annoying (why her, why not Keisha or Keiko or ... ?), and finally it was worrying (I'm married). I decided it was definitely time for the fatvatar. I cannot adequately express the ambivalent feelings I have about this. I envied Kathy and her "powers." And I was aggrieved on behalf of my other avs. I'd put time into them as well. I collected skins and evaluated them for which av looked best in which. I accumulated hair with a vengeance to find the best. There's lots of nice hair out there, even for free. I even kept demos of hair I thought worthy of purchase when enough Lindens were available with notes that read, "Buy when you have $179!" Slapping this freebie hair (From Bishwear, by the way - and they don't have anything else as good because I have looked and looked) on has made all the difference in the world. My husband tells me that men look at the hair first and then the eyes. "What about the boobs?" I asked. He looked thoughtful and then told me that they were probably about fourth on the list.

The fatvatar, like Kathy, was started from scratch. She had to be under six feet - I just don't understand the giant avs. Now that I have a 22" monitor, everyone's butt looks big, so she might be a bit narrower than necessary. But she does have a belly and arms and legs with meat on them. And then there is the round face with the extra flab under the chin. To make her cuter, I made her eyes larger. I tried all sorts of hair, but Kathy's old hair looks terrific. There was some very girly skin in my inventory, with huge pink lips and I decided that "pink" about said it all for this gal.

Next came the clothes, and the stuff I read was right. Prim clothing bits can be prettily easily resized and I was able to do that for her. Mesh clothing is something else. I thought the tunic and leggings look would be good on her, but too many of the patterns (texture on mesh) get stretched out of shape. I don't even want to get into what happened to her booty. It got shifted. That's all you need to know. Hearkening back to my youth, I guessed that the babydoll style would suit her and I was right. Black is a good one as well. If you're wearin' black, you've covered a multitude of sins. I might just have to use this info in RL! In the photo above, my fatvatar is wearing an outfit that is very similar to the one that got me sent to the office for indecent exposure in high school, another one of life's proudest moments.

I only had to post photos of her on Flickr before I got a positive response ... from someone else with a chubby av. But who gets the real attention? The pale one with the big, messy black wig. It is almost to larf. It is so predictable. You have the same person doing the talking, the walking, the dancing - but you slim her down and put poofy big hair on her and suddenly she's attractive.
There is a really nice bonus to this and it is that there is a real person who looks like Kathy gothed and she's just as nice as she is beautiful. It wasn't until much later that I realized Kathy gothed looked just like Christine. Christine, by the way, is available and lives in the northeast US. The eponymous Kathy, my dear friend from childhood, is also available and lives in the south. Anyone interested, please contact me.

Me, I am happily taken.

By the way, my fatvatar obviously needs a name. I am open to nice suggestions.