Saturday, June 24, 2006

Ethnic bias of the Yahoo avatar's

In a comment to the post about my Avatar, Legal-ize-IT suggested that I do Avatar's for my various boyfriends. But I can't, not in any satisfactory way anyway! Boyfriend number 2 is from Singapore, and although boyfriend number 3 is British, he is ethnically Indian. Everything I see at the Yahoo avatar web site looks Caucasian to me.

Beyond that, although it is possible to alter the skin colour, if I was a very black African (e.g. Nigerian) then it wouldn't be possible to create a skin colour dark enough. Also, saddle-up said I was "tres cute" - but then I reckon all the possible avatars from Yahoo look quite cute! Why can't I put an older face on my Avatar's body. I don't want to pretend that I'm 21 years old any more - I've been with boyfriend number 1 since 1989!

Am I missing something? If anyone knows of a less biased web site for avatars then please let me know!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I kinda thought the same thing about the age. I'm slightly older than my avatar makes me look, and it's not that I'm trying to kid on. I suit my age very well, actually.

Anonymous said...

I have seen African and Asian features for the avatars,you just have to play around with skin tone,faces and hairstyles to get the look you want. Admittedly they are "young" but I guess that means they were meant for teens to play with..LOL!

Anonymous said...

I thought the same about ethnic features and skin colour, too. The range is limited, and you can't play around with the build like on My Virtual Model. I guess one can't be too young-looking, too slim or too cute!