Yellow Mustangs, crossgender avatars, and Victoria’s Secret

On the second night of the Metaverse Summit, I had dinner with an interesting bunch of folks, including Daniel Terdiman, the reporter whose articles on the Summit appear to have been reprinted everywhere on the planet; Nicole Lazzaro of XEODesign; Max Skibinsky of Hive7; and Ron Meiners, community expert extraordinaire. (There were another 9 or so folks at the dinner, but we ended up all at different tables).

Given the diversity of the group, it was only natural that we should end up talking about sex.

Well, OK, not really, that was just a gimmick to get you to click past the fold. 🙂 What we really discussed was gender construction. Bear with me through an anecdote or three.

Yellow Mustangs
When I walked up the rental counter at the San Jose airport, I gave them my reservation number. It was for “a compact car, Ford Focus or similar.” I’m on the phone while doing this, more than a bit distracted, and when they ask “is a two-seater OK?” I just nodded distractedly, took the keys, and wandered out to parking spot #227.

Wherein there is a yellow Ford Mustang. I mean, yellow. Canary yellow. Child’s plastic toy yellow. The sort of yellow sports car that makes you roll your eyes when you see it on the highway — and which you only see on the highway in certain parts of the country. A male midlife crisis car.

So I get in the car and start to drive. My back starts to hurt immediately. The steering wheel is way low (I managed to figure out how to give my knees some room eventually), and if I sit up in the seat, I’m actually above the windshield and cannot see the streetlights. Going around the looping exits and turns on the way out of the airport throws me from side to side.

On the other hand, I notice that other cars get out of my way. After all, a yellow sports car means a reckless driver, right? And sure enough, after 24 hours I am a reckless driver. There I am, noticing that when I start with the other cars after a green light, I seem to leave them in the dust. I find myself cornering much faster. Some of the other Summit attendees are following me because my car is a bright beacon, and I have to struggle not to leave them behind.

The kicker comes when I am about to make a left turn on a green light. I have to yield to oncoming traffic, but I don’t, because I know I can go all the way across the intersection before the oncoming cars even make it off the starting line. What’s more, I know the oncoming cars know it too; as soon as I rev the engine a little, they just stop, expecting me to do the reckless thing.

Ah, the power. I decided then and there that I don’t need a sports car in my life.

Victoria’s Secret
Nicole, Ron, and Dan all go to Burning Man. I’d been talking with Max about Hive7, missing half the discussion, when the phrase “they recommend Victoria’s Secret” caught my attention.

See, it turns out that Nicole had been bothered by the fact that Burning Man has a different sort of clothing recommendation list for men — she was sure that somewhere, the list of recommended clothing for Burning Man included Victoria’s Secret for women. (A half hour was then spent searching through the Burning Man documentation for this mention, which wasn’t located — but Nicole found it later and emailed it out).

This led to the discussion of why this was problematic. And the conclusion was that the issue was a co-option of the fantasy; whereas the women might want to wear Victoria’s Secret for a particular reason of their own, once they were in the company of men the intent was co-opted by the male fantasy. In essence, the only way to have that fantasy was in a gender-segregated environment.

This led to a broader discussion of both crossgender avatar roleplay and of the “gameplay” of Burning Man. It seems that recently, Burning Man decided to have a “newbie tutorial” of sorts that led novices to the experience through a variety of tasks and locations that they might otherwise never have discovered, and that led them to do things that they otherwise would not have done. As any virtual world administrator might expect, there was a bit of an outcry from those who had found those things on their own, decrying the handholding and the “lack of self-discovery” that having a menu to choose from implied.

Then again, when I offered Nicole a ride in the yellow Mustang, she accepted quite readily. Although later Ron commented that without a convertible top, I wasn’t quite living the California dream.

Dancing at the Fat Man’s Jam
Every year at GDC, George “The Fat Man” Sanger does a jam session with whoever happens to stop by and can pound, pluck, or blow on an instrument. This year, we took over a corner of the second floor hallway at the Fairmont hotel, where there was a piano. Bemused hotel guests wandered by, and settled in to stay for a bit. George lent me a flattop made out of steel. Damion sat in with a borrowed guitar. We all vainly tried to keep up with the amazing piano player and Charlie, who seemed to be a jazz-trained bassist.

At one point, George stopped singing, and told me to “do something.” So I started noodling; Charlie laid down a bass line; the pianist took my simple little melody line and turned it into something actually good; and some weird Latin jazz thing emerged that pretty soon had a bunch of folks dancing in the halls.

Well, OK, not just dancing. Getting down. Writhing. Doing weird things with the walls. Stuff you would only see in clubs, because seeing it in a hotel hallway sort of made you go “wtf?” In the moment, it was awesome. Out of the moment — well, there was video taken, and I suspect some folks might be a bit embarrassed if it were posted up. But that’s what dance does, and they shouldn’t be. After all, dance is usually faintly ridiculous but it’s still worth doing.

Watching game industry HR directors, UI researchers, and conference organizers try to put together synchronized wriggling to improvized semi-Latin rhythms was like watching masks both be put on and come off. It was revealing of who we really are, and who we can’t be.

And that’s why…
…yellow Mustangs, Victoria’s Secret, and cross-gender roleplay are the same thing. And mySpace profiles. And AIM handles. And business cards.

The interesting thing about this is the way they shape in both directions. I didn’t like the way that some people looked at me when I was in the yellow Mustang. I enjoyed the feeling of power, but I didn’t like the way it invited abuse. Nicole wasn’t a fan of the way a fantasy of freedom and self-expression at Burning Man was tinged with undesired sexual overtones. Many of the people who roleplay crossgender cite annoyance with the sexualization of their avatars that often confounds others, given that, well, they’re choosing an avatar of another sex.

I’ve written before that perhaps the reason for choosing one mask or another — be it player race, gender, class, or whatever — is effectively a way of signaling preferred modes of interaction. “Bright yellow sports car” signals something about who you want to interact with and in what way. Victoria’s Secret signals another. And sometimes, the signals these crude masks send are mixed. But if you can get into a group that shares a common understanding of a given mask, you can get along quite well.

A final anecdote
I’m in Guitar Center, asking about where I could get the 1961 Gibson guitar I just inherited restored. I buy some new strings, a couple of guitar stands. My kids are pestering the sales guy, and once he hears they both have guitars, he’s asking what sort of music they listen to. “Punk?” he asks, mishearing me. “No, Pokemon.” “Ah,” he says, “cool, man.” He nods sagely. He of course has long hair.

The total comes to $47.61. He says “I just put $45 on the debit card.” Hey, he’s a musician, we’re all musicians, it’s all cool. Why bother with change? We did the secret handshake, and parted friends.