Everyone knows I’m short and fat (really! 5’0 in SL and well I’d suspect a size 14/16) but it’s her business and her way of displaying her clothes. Funny there will be hundreds scrambling to do it but ask a model to go heavier (more closer to my shape) and they freak out.

Except my girls I had for my show who were very willing to stretch their shape as big as they could.

Show how your dresses look in tall, small, thin, thick girls, that they can be adjusted, that they still look good when you are not a match

Smile when you say that, pardner.

I know trannies, I’ve seen trannies, some of my bestest online friends are trannies, and zOMG, I am a trannie! Though I usually use the term, transfolk or transpeople myself. And most “trannies” don’t look like waifish six and a half foot tall supermodels with boob jobs in need of a bag of Matt’s Chocolate Chip cookies, or Hostess Donettes.

The average middle aged MTF (male to female) transperson (whether crossdreser or transsexual) probably looks more like a taller version of my plus sized shape than that Gracie shape. Unless they’re lucky skinny bitches, then I hate them…..just kidding.

There’s “catalog model CC” who is about 5′ 6″ and still slender but in a more of a “I do my yoga and pilates every day so I can still fit into a size 6 but I’m not going to give up muffins.” I made her when I had been hanging with Boss Sabrina and (later on) Tanya Book.That CC looks good in everything and probably is my favorite CC, even if I’ve pretty much switched to:

Plus size CC, which has a belly like RL CC, though RL CC is probably a touch smaller on average, but it’s close, very close. I made her because being around Rosie Barthelmess made me realize that perhaps I should have some shape honesty too and that didn’t mean I still couldn’t be pretty. There’s fit issues with prim stuff, of course, but she still looks pretty good in most things. I’m still tweaking it, I’m trying to make it realistically plus sized, but even plus size CC is probably at the smaller end of the plus size scale. in RL she might be able to plus size model, if she lost a little of that pudge, and was a few inches taller.

As for me, I’d mod my shape for a show or shoot, no problem. It’s the employer’s dime, though it would be nice to be chosen to model because I was chubby CC.

I’ll do up a gracie version of me sometime, maybe later tonight when the windows box is freed up.

What if she had said she wanted super curvy models with really large measurements? Then what about skinny girls who felt bad about that? I think that could easily bring up body issues for some people.

Everyone has issues with how they look. RL/SL. I have met very few people who don’t dislike something about how they look.

The only person who can make you feed bad about these things is yourself. For every Gracie who wants a super thin, lanky model there is another designer who wants a curvy one.

That is all.

WHY? Whyyyyyyyyy?Whyyyyyy?

She’s 6’0″ and that was her “tall” shape I made specifically for runway.

I realize where people are coming from with the body issue thing, but really, it’s just a virtual world/game/thing. What’s next? Hating all Japanese cartoons because the female characters are thin and young?

I do have to give Gracie props for even hiring virtual models in the first place. More designers should if they can; it gives employment to female avatars that isn’t in adult entertainment, and keeps the economy going.

My beef with the shape below, though, LOL:

* The legs are too skinny and lack tone. RL fashion models still have nice legs, that particular shape has no calf or thigh definition. They’re also too long. Sans-shoes, the crotch should be halfway down the body. If you make the arms that skinny + lack of torso muscles, the mesh starts to show a gap between the armpit that looks lousy. It is still possible to make a proportionate shape in SL that is overly tall and slender, but it’s a LOT harder, because the entire mesh is stretched upwards like taffy. When I had an agency I think I had a height cap of 6’3″ for the models (though they all ignored it, sigh.)

I really wish I could find a way to write this eloquently like I have done in my head every time I see these walking sticks. I’m very attached to my avie and I relate to her and I think that’s probably common place amongst many avies. When I see other avies I often see it as a representation of what they’d like to look like and what they believe is beautiful. And I have to say being so obviously underweight and disproportionate you’d probably collapse if you stood up it’s not something I want to see promoted.
I hope this makes sense, I really think it’s a serious issue and I know there’s going to be a lot of ‘SL sticks don’t make real life eating disorders’ and ‘all these women are just middle-aged women reliving their twenties and trying to be glam’ comments but I think with more young people entering the grid who seem to be seriously concerned with body image and weight it will be a major problem for some people and I think it would be decent of the SL fashion community to take responsibility and promote a healthier body image.

I’ll be about the only one to say this but I’m all right if Gracie feels bad. Every time I see a shape like what she specifies I feel terrible.

When someone says ” I think the ano look is absolute bullshit, and ugly.” — it’s just as nasty as someone saying “Curvy chicks look fat and like slobs”.. can’t we all just accept each other no matter what shape we have? Don’t we get enough bullshit RL about how we are too much this or not enough that or whatever?

As far as Gracie’s requirements. I suppose it is just what she feels looks best. Idk, I am so over sl fashion in many ways, it’s all so safe and typical and not fun and exciting. Why doesn’t anyone call for dwarf models? Or like robot women? Sometimes it feels like so many designers have NO clue about fashion or trying anything new and interesting and current.. it’s always the same-o same-o.I feel like hitting them all over the head with a copy of Japanese Vogue. There are, of course, exceptions to this and there are many kickass designers in SL, but this Gracie thing doesn’t shock me, it’s just the same old ho-hum whatever.

I have been having fun lately wearing chav clothes and a full body crips tattoo and a ton of jewelry and monster hair and orange skin. I am gonna ask Gracie if I can model for her!

Everyone is fine with me. You all look lovely today. The extreme sliders, the anorexics, the fat girls, the blingtards, the furries, the vampires, the shemales, the non Japanese girls who keep trying to look Japanese, the nekos and the lovely women of Gang Bangers Big Booty Interracial Gang Bang Sex Club .

We are all beautiful. <3

I just don’t get why the shape has to have small hips and butt just because she uses system skirts a lot…isn’t it enough to have a system skirt shape that is modified to look good in system skirts?

She wants to present her clothing in a certain way. It’s not to my taste, but I can see why she might believe that the silhouette of her outfits would be accentuated by a tall, thin shape. There are a large number of other designers using the same kinds of shapes in their ads, and tons of fashion bloggers with that whole cartoonish stick legs, big head look going on. I don’t see them being singled out here.

The specifications Gracie posted are what she would like the people she is paying to use while they are modelling for her ads. She isn’t suggesting that they need to look like this all the time.

It’s her brand, she’s going to be paying these people, she’s allowed to expect certain things of her employees. How often have you seen a furry store model? (Lag issues aside…that generally has nothing to do with it.) Even the ones with elven ears are few and far between, and “modelling agencies” will ask you to tweak your shape, change your ears/hair/etc. to fit what they desire- sometimes just for a particular job, sometimes as a matter of course (for instance, I know someone who had to put away her elf ears and change her haircolour for an agency. It’s not the end of the world, when she’s not working for them…she can go back to the look that she prefers). It’s the tradeoff for what you’re getting out of it, and you can always walk away. That’s the beauty of SL- an ear trim, a tummy tuck, a boob lift, a nose job, it’s all a couple of seconds’ work, and you can go right back to what _you_ want to look like when that’s over.

However, we get attached to our avatars, and they are wrapped into our sense of self- even though Allegory isn’t a true representation of myself (I could never pull off a mohawk! And the very first day she rezzed I decided what I wanted to her to look like, which was the persona that fit the name, not me. She’s not an amazon by any stretch, but she’s still a few inches taller than I am, too. Interesting aside- the height detectors we use are actually off a bit too, so you aren’t actually the height you think you are, although it’s still close), it is always a little strange wearing a different shape, skin, hair, etc. Even when I wear a friend’s shape, that I think makes _them_ beautiful, it feels _wrong_ to me. Which is really weird, because I see everyone on the same screen!

Additionally, a lot of people have created avatars that are helping them get over body issues, which is a very interesting social/psychological aspect to SL. But people still attack others on their shapes- especially those with more realistic avatars. I’d rather have diversity than a bunch of stick thin amazons. I’d also rather have some sort of RL height equivalent built into the shape sliders, a “x meters, y feet z inches” at the side at all times when tweaking a shape, since I don’t think most people who are super tall actually think of anything in those terms. (Although, truly, sizes _are_ arbitrary anyway- and buildings need to be built oversized simply because of the way the system works.)

To me, the Gracie’s avatars are not to my taste- they are far too angular and out of proportion (the legs are _far_ too long, aside from everything else), and I don’t see them as appearing like RL models, but instead as cartoons- they are drawings, for lack of a better word, by someone who doesn’t study realism- in fact they look a bit like the fashion drawings, as opposed to the people who actually wear the fashions- have you seen the things they teach kids at fashion design school? I’ve always found it odd that they would design clothing on things that were often so dramatically beyond even the reality the tallest and thinnest model could achieve. But regardless, SL has absolutely no obligation to be real. Most people choose to try to look real, but that’s _their_ choice.