- legs sufficiently separated that the avatar can stand astride a piano bench without bending her knees
- gap-toothed
- a sullen, frowning face
It's sufficiently well-known to be parodied; Iris Ophelia has written in New World Notes about a flickr image, titled "The Average Avi Body on SL", that pokes fun at it.
Do I like the trend? Not particularly; the legs would seem to require something other than a human pelvis, which creeps me out a little. Being gap-toothed has worked fine for Ali McGraw and other well-known beautiful women; I recall long ago seeing what was either a TV show or a short movie all about gap-toothed women--but I wouldn't choose it. The sullen look is the worst for me. Yes, it's hard to get a good-looking, non-phony smile in SL... but even if I can't show that I'm having fun in-world that way, I don't want to look like I can't stand it or whoever is around. I don't want to look blasé, too cool to care, or tragically hip, just as I don't want to be any of those.
All that said, what others do with their avatars is, for the most part, their business. In the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, it neither breaks my neck^H^H^H^Hleg nor picks my pocket. Some things go over the edge for me--in which case I go elsewhere. For all I know, they may think something analogous of my avatar.
UPDATE: Thanks for the comments--and Ms. Tsiolkovsky, I hope that you are still writing somewhere. And for those of you who aren't as antique as I am, here's what the post title references:
UPDATE: Thanks for the comments--and Ms. Tsiolkovsky, I hope that you are still writing somewhere. And for those of you who aren't as antique as I am, here's what the post title references:
