Duck!

The issue of height inflation has come back up: Doreen Garrigus writes about her experiences with a 5'2" avatar in her new blog Original Detail, and it's been picked up in New World Notes.

It's true; the average height of avatars is far greater than average height in RL, and appallingly, the prejudice held against child avatars carries over, with the fallacious logic of "shorter than me implies child implies pervert" (even when the avatar is quite obviously post-puberty).

As a flamboyantly tall and leggy as possible avatar, I deal with Victorian dresses that shockingly show my ankles (!), glitchpants far longer than they should be for the matching prim skirts, sitting poses that put my feet underground, and crossed leg poses that are just wrong. Those who choose realistic heights have the corresponding problems at the opposite end... except for one.

Long ago, I was invited on board a ship. It was quite lovely, and I explored it... until I got to the cabin. Bonk... back up, try again, bonk. (My poor head!) Fortunately by then I knew the "travel by sitting on something" trick and got through the doorway by sitting on the captain's chair. More recently, when the passage up stairs in a store blocked my path, there was nothing upstairs I could sit on. The shop potentially lost my business because of that.

So... can't I duck in SL? (For that matter, can you crawl? You'd think people would want that for battle simulations if nothing else.)