Greeks in SL at Virtual Harlem

On a Friday in April 2008, I attended an evening fundraiser for MS sponsored by the members of Delta Omega Phi, and held at the Cotton Club in Virtual Harlem; compared with the party I had attended at Mr. Bigg’s club on a previous Sunday, this group was a bit more sedate and sophisticated with the flirtatious talk, (but only a bit). It was good to see an event going on in Virtual Harlem, because it had seemed quite desolate when I first found out about it in November, and there were quite a few AVs in attendance at this event wearing resident tags, with a total of about 60 people listed in the group in the search tool. On this night, funds were being raised by a date auction, and of course, as is typical for most SL events (let alone RL events among black professionals) the women up for auction outnumber the men, but the ratio is not nearly as imbalanced as it could be, or as much as it was at the aforementioned party, where there were only 4 men in attendance. The theme was “Love Jones with a Touch of Brown Sugar,” with a total of eight men up for auction, and 12 women, and about 30 people in attendance all together. Looking at the body shape choices being made by these black women in SL, I have to wonder what exactly we are doing by not simply exaggerating butts and thighs to represent an authentic black femaleness, but also sexualizing those body features.
Is it a more authentic way of representing desire as a form of female autonomy, or are we simply making ourselves over into objects that men want to look at in SL as in RL? And compared with the way white female avatars are idealized, black female AVs really are very large visually, stretching the glitch pants to their limits. Of course, this may not mean that something is wrong with us as black women, but that something is wrong with the construction of clothing and the standards that are used to determine the “typical” size of the “average” avatar, so that in the case of many of the women here, the skirt prim layers actually expose the glitch pants when the AV is standing still because of the AV's body dimensions.
This fundraising event was also secondarily billed as an open-mic poetry reading, and Neven came forward to perform, and many others, both men and women, with love poems, and angry political poems. The best I heard that night was a pop culture play in which the poet made Batman into a baby daddy with Catwoman as the third leg of the romantic triangle; it was a great mashup not only of familiar pop culture tropes, but also a comment on the SL experience of romantic drama, which led to accompanying chat with women drooling over Green Lantern, Superman, and Aquaman. In response, some of the men moved to claim Wonder Woman as the superhero that they wouldn't mind spending a little time with. Did no one think of Storm? It shows us that the superhero pantheon could use a few more heroines! I found another example of RL pop culture being reinterpreted in SL style in the men’s style of dress for the formality of the occasion, which was heavy on the gangster-pimp tip, while coming up a bit short on the sophisticated tuxedo as the evening wear of choice. Enjoying much of the entertainment in voice, I found that most of the attendees also sounded very young, as if they are still on campus or only very recent graduates who are part of the sorority or fraternity; some tags were Omega Prospect or Delta Pledge, with some of the usual titles on the ranking members such as Big Sister or Big Que demonstrating their leadership positions in the social organizations. The club gradually emptied as the time drew closer to 8 pm SLT, and as successful bidders went on their dates for the evening, which really was truly beginning. This event was just one of a number of activities organized by black Greeks in SL; as with their RL counterparts, they successfully combine their interest in giving to the larger community with their interest in having some fun, and I am sure to have more fun and more giving to report on in the near future.