Identity is an elusive concept. Who am I? How do I reflect myself? Who do I want to be? There are many things that make us, well, us. So when you have to create an avatar that shows “who” you are, a complex spider web of interrelated, intermingled factors keep changing our perceptions of self and of self in society, adding and modifying even the smallest details of that digital “I.”
I am a woman, a daughter, a sister, a Venezuelan,
a member of the Catholic Church, a friend, a journalism student, among many other things…in the physical world.
Creating an avatar to represent myself was beyond
a simple assignment—it was a challenge. Not only did it involve a total
compromise of my inexistent computer skills, but it also threw me into a world
completely alien to me. Beyond the initial weirdness—fueled by stereotypical preconceptions
of what “sort” of people enters these virtual worlds—my frustration at not
being able to do anything sparked a certain curiosity on why people would want
to engage in a “second life” when the “first life” was already complicated to
begin with.
Why a second body? Why a second self? Isn’t one
enough? That was my frustration talking.
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Retrieved from "The Eclectic Mind,"
Facebook |
It actually took me long to figure out how to
change the appearance— “my” appearance— from a somewhat amorphous humanoid to
something closer to the person I see in the mirror every morning.
What was I trying to say to those who could see my
avatar? Well, my initial intention was showing who I am, the way I am. No
tweaking, no altering, no thinning. Nothing. I wanted to my digital self to be
exactly whom I think my physical self is. What message was I trying to convey?
That life is one and we must work with what we have, whether we like it or not.
Although at first it was hard to figure out how
much can you tell about your exact self (let alone 1000 words), I could not
help but remember the old Anthropological mantra of making the strange familiar
and, in this case, the familiar strange.
Now I was before the task of making me strange.
After long periods of experimenting—during which I
had to start over more than a couple of times, was hairless until the very last
minute, and could not figure out how to change my clothing from “goth girl” or
“rocker” to the plain me—I realized that identity and my perception of self is
more complex than I had initially thought.
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| Created at Second Life |
During the creative process, I found myself
wanting to add details that would get my personality across, but, how exactly
do you do that with an avatar? There’s no tutorial, manual or instructions that
can tell you who you are and how to be yourself. Perhaps a psychologist but, is
there such thing as a “Second Life psych”…?
Creating your digital self is a solo enterprise,
and a hard one for that matter.
As I said, I wanted my digital self to resemble what
I think I look like—short, curvy, simply dressed, my backpack always on me, ready
to work…
When I looked at my finished avatar I realized I did
not look precisely feminine under traditional standards (I could have worn a
dress, or a skirt, perhaps more makeup). I did, however, look like the woman my
parents raised—strong, confident, accountable and always ready. Both my decisions and the technical components of Second Life had worked to "give birth" to my digital self.
Interestingly enough, while trying—and struggling—to
create “me,” I noticed an interesting pattern. More often than not, it is
external, technical factors that deviated the appearance of my digital self from
how I truly look. It was not intentional; I did not want to, it just happened. Very
much like in real life, where events and the rhythm of everyday life, the
people we encounter and with whom we interact, ultimately shape our beings,
whether we notice it or not.
At the end my digital self ended up being a product
of my own conscious decisions and the conditions and influence from the
environment it was created in. When I look at her—at me—I could see “digi-me”
acting the way I would act, just in a way more appropriate to her world. It is
not that she is a second me or that that virtual world is a “second life.” She
is I in the virtual version of my life.
The same way I understand my place and engage with
the world with my body, experiences and struggles (as Elaine Scarry suggested),
my digital version was learning, largely by trial and error, to engage in her
own world.
Precisely because of this— although I did have the
intention to be “myself” from the very start— and after going through the
process of creating and interacting with the world through my digital body, I
cannot help but question Liuan Chen Huska’s idea that with avatars and online
worlds “users can transcend the limitations of
race, gender, class and age which attach themselves to our bodily existence.
Users are free to create new identities...”
Even though the temptation to lie is
present, even if one lies in the online world, ultimately the people behind our
digital selves will always be us. What we convey, what we say, the way we act,
will always be shaped by our experiences in the real, physical world. In other
words, it is not like we are creating another identity, separating ourselves
from our existence, as the author of Digital Bodies suggest, but what we are
actually doing is extending our existence to and through another media.
No matter how many avatars I create or
how similar or different from my physical self they look, no matter how much I
lie...all of my digital bodies will ultimately behave like I do. All of them, by
extension, would be a woman, a daughter,
a sister, a Venezuelan, a member of the Catholic Church, a friend, a journalism
student…even if they do not look like one.
My digital bodies are not separate identities, they
are just me, a virtual me, understanding and interacting in the world in another realm.
Esther Daniela Castillejo
