Avatar

an icon or figure that represents a particular person in video games or online forums.

As Christine Liao discovered through her research in Second Life, avatars can shape the way we interact and are seen by others in the online world. By changing the appearance of her avatar while playing, she found that others opinions of her changed depended on her age, weight, and level of gender ambiguity. The less obviously feminine she made her avatar, the more people assumed that she was male. Also, the less her avatar appealed to society’s standards of beauty, the more negatively people reacted to her. She found that it also changed the way she felt about herself and her avatar.

References

Liao, C. L. (2008). My Metamorphic Avatar Journey. Visual Culture and Gender, 3, 30-39. Retrieved March 3, 2016.