Hair defines us

'Hair defines us'. So says Candi Socke, a New Yorker domiciled in Britain for many years. Yes, she agreed to pose for the blog but, 'the clothes stay on'. Fair enough. Nevertheless, Candi was happy to share a number of hairstyles with us that, she says, have defined her SL since she joined. 'I like them all, the ones I've bought. Each of them pretty much replicates periods of my real life and teenage and youth experiments with hairstyles as I sought to find the real me. I think we do that with avatars too.'

Now settled on the style in pic 5 'for now', Candi says it's closest to her current RL style. Pic 1 was a style that 'reminded me of my teenage years', while pics 2 & 3 were 'the wild teenage styles. I still like to wear those afro styles in SL. They take me back to where I was at a specific age, and if I'm wearing an afro, I'm looking for the clothes to match, and then SL clubs where that style fits right in with the music being played. It can be all about re-capturing a place.'

'Hair defines us in SL, I think, much more than the clothes or even the personality, real or imagined, we project. We're searching for 'a look', and my various hairstyles have defined my SL persona much more readily than any other aspect of avatar construction. Once I've got the hair in place the clothes follow and, more importantly, so does the matter of mentally plugging Candi's avatar into a place, a time, a mood.'