!SEX!--Skin Exposure Study Results, RL/SL Xcite Touch “Toys”, and Lolas are the Hot Topics

“Let’s Talk About Sex Baby”.. as the Salt-N-Pepa song goes...so continues the ongoing discussions in SL about all things sex. Far be it for me to advocate for all the sex that goes on in SL because everyone knows I’m bigger on promoting the creativity in SL, live music, art, builds to explore, education, etc… but once in a while we all have to admit it’s right there all over SL too and it won’t be denied, so rather than deny it, today I will embrace it (or at least write about some of it on my blog).

3 Hot & Sexy Topics.  Here we go.....................

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Skin Exposure Study in SL on Plos One-Look here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0051921

Yesterday a study was released by Plos One regarding percentages of skin exposed by male vs female avatars in SL. They have a well executed study and well written interesting article worth reading.

Measuring people's propensity to reveal skin can be difficult in the real world as there are so many variables. To study human behavior free of at least some of these constraints, Matthieu Guitton and colleagues from Laval University, Canada analyzed how male and female avatars in Second Life dress.  They found that out of over 400 virtual people studied, 71 percent of male avatars covered between 75-100 percent of their skin, while only 5 percent of females did. In contrast, 47 percent of the virtual females they studied covered between 25-49 percent of their skin, compared to 9 percent of males. The amount of skin covered was independent of traditional gender-specific measures of physical attractiveness for virtual avatars, such as waist-chest ratios for females.

"These findings have implications for understanding how sex specific aspects of skin disclosure influence human social interactions in both virtual and real settings," the study stated.

The research was published in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

 

 I was actually surprised the results indicate such a discrepancy between the genders. There are many implications here. My first question obviously was whether the number of first life males portrayed as female avatars was taken into consideration and of course they did. They factored with and also without the previous statistic that 25% of avatars portray the opposite sex of their first life person (that was a newsworthy percentage tibit for me as well). They also factored in cultural norms and took into consideration a great number of things such as child avatars, various skin and body types, and even included variables such as hand coverage as this is an area typically used in communication, etc. All the of stats still turned out relatively the same with female avatars exposing a significantly larger percentage of their skin than males. I actually found this study extremely interesting and most people know I’m not in SL to think too much after a long day at RL work, so seriously it’s worth reading if not at least giving it a glance. There are larger implications here but I’m not going to get into that because I don’t really want to think THAT much right now but those implications are the very reason for everyone to read the full article.  This work was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. I  want that job.  

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Next stop, Xcite Touch“Toys”!. Did everyone get what they wanted for Christmas this year? If not there are always the Xcite Touch toys as seen here:http://www.getxcite.com/store.php?act=listcat&cat=Touch.Touch%20FAQ
This is actually a pretty impressive set up.  I'd love to hear from someone who has tried this out.  If you don't follow the link you are missing out, but use your imagination.  Their site states,"Touch syncs up your real life toy with a virtual toy, so that when the virtual toy begins vibrating, so does the real toy. This may include various controls such as a pattern of vibrations, strength of the vibrations, etc"  "...Are you feeling it yet?" This is worthy of a blog post all by itself really, but just check out the link.  Seriously .. do it. It's "interesting" for lack of a better term coming to my mind atm.
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 (pic of Kara (left) and Bel by Belinda Barnes)

Lola Tangos: AKA: Big huge perky mesh boobs.

Finally, information about Lola Tangos has been blogged, tweeted, talked about and most designers are jumping on the band wagon making compatible skins and clothes for the new Lola mesh Tangos, female chest implants that are perky and size adjustable. Really the only downfall to this generation of enhancements is that they don’t work with physics. They can be dialed down small to a typically average or more realistic size or bumped up to major "gadunk gadunk watch out you don’t get a black eye jogging"  size. Oh, wait, no worries about black eyes here, as again, physics don’t work with these. ~sigh~ I like physics personally. Anyway, I digress, and no one wants to hear me ramble in writing as much as I do verbally…. here they are KT’s Lolas. Photo courtesy of Belinda Barnes who set up the photo shoot. We actually had the tangos on earlier when they came out as Bel definitely likes to try new things in SL but we did this photo when we were showing how we took on 2^nd jobs at “Hooters” to help defray the cost of some of our extra Christmas expenses. It appears Bel and I were enjoying our new enhancements more than the guys were. Yes, I do think the girls get a “hoot” out of these for some reason and I’ve even seen some of the models wearing them, but honestly for me I do prefer a more natural look for daily wear and can still get out my tangos when I’m feeling a bit wild. Don’t forget you do have to have special clothes and the applicators and will have to line up and match skin tone but that is easier now that many of the popular skin makers have included applicators that match their skin. Check them out all over the SL Marketplace and many places inworld.  I can't get that saying out of my mind.... "We'll pump YOU up!"

Addendum: There is a new script to make the Lola Tangos bounce .. woot!  Check it out here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hepsia/128/128/23