CeN's Two Cents test post content
13 years ago
Friday, April 3, 2009
Shapes and Tats at Divahtoos
Divah Latte makes tattoos and shapes and takes portraits; her shop Divahtoos has locations at Tahitian Dreams' SuperNova Enterprises Complex and the Hot Tropics sim. Divahtoos are perfectly and dramatically visible on darker skins, and themes range from the sweet (butterflies, hearts and swirls, and stars) to the sexy (Lick!) for women, and totally thuggish for the guys--tear drops, anyone? Her Everyshape line includes pregnancy shapes and voluptuous plus sizes as well as a child shape; the adult women are grown-ass, sweet-faced sistas--no snobby, twiggy models here! Divah offers thirteen Everyshapes currently that have hips and breasts and thighs, very hourglassy, very curvy shapes that your special friend will love to hold, and I expect that more are on the way, as what she has displayed is listed in ABC order, so there is room for thirteen more, at least. she also makes custom shapes and custom tats. Her portrait studio offers a number of choices for combinations of textures and poses at affordable rates with stylish personalization on display. I can't wait to see what she makes next!http://slurl.com/secondlife/University%20City/228/144/282/
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Call to Diaspora Artists--A Contest!
$ 2000L 1st PRIZE
Sunrise Mansion Art Gallery & Museum, Isla del Sol (176,223, 22) is now accepting submissions from SL artists for its April Show!! Le Chapeau, The Hat, The Crown, The Bonnet, All mediums and all levels of experience welcome--paintings, photography, sculpties, etc.--to present fashion photos of the best and most stylish hats and head wraps of the African Diaspora. In addition to the awarding of Lindens, the opening of the exhibit is going to be celebrated with a southern-style HIGH-TEA!!! Interested participants should contact Indea Vaher or Aletha Inaka directly to submit their entries, before the deadline of March 27th, 2009. Good luck!
Sunrise Mansion Art Gallery & Museum, Isla del Sol (176,223, 22) is now accepting submissions from SL artists for its April Show!! Le Chapeau, The Hat, The Crown, The Bonnet, All mediums and all levels of experience welcome--paintings, photography, sculpties, etc.--to present fashion photos of the best and most stylish hats and head wraps of the African Diaspora. In addition to the awarding of Lindens, the opening of the exhibit is going to be celebrated with a southern-style HIGH-TEA!!! Interested participants should contact Indea Vaher or Aletha Inaka directly to submit their entries, before the deadline of March 27th, 2009. Good luck!
Monday, March 23, 2009
Glowing Skins for Ethnic Girls and Boys
I spent over an hour happily and enthusiastically collecting demos of skins and hair and shapes to sample in Shiloh Jun's store Shybooty, and it's a wonderful place for women of color who are not at all shy about having generous booties! Now I am back at home trying on my new stuff, and I'm definitely seeing faces and bodies that remind me of my momma, my aunts, my sister and my girlfriends. Distinctive facial features were complimented by vibrant, glowing and flattering selections of makeup looks, and subtle details to the shading and freckling of skins overall gave them a realistic depth that pops on the screen. I found the shapes a bit too top-heavy for my personal tastes, but if your lover likes his or her hands full, well, you might like Shiloh's shapes too, and she also has a line of BBW shapes and kids' shapes available too so that a genuine family can be represented. Among all of the interesting offerings in the store is also a line inspired by the looks of Miss Universe contestants representing a true United Nations of feminine beauty, including Misses Brazil, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Trinidad, and Miss United States. They look so lovely, I hope more are on the way so that we can really play, maybe have our own SL pageant! I haven't even tried on any of the hair, tattoos or clothing I bought, let alone any of the men's shapes and skins, so when I do, I'll try to remember to report back! Even though I love my own shape and skin, the one I've been in since I first came here nearly two years ago, I plan to be playing with these new, fun, very authentically black pieces for a long while. If you want to look like a sista should, I encourage you to explore Shybooty too.http://slurl.com/secondlife/Marqi%20Global%20HQ/89/217/24/
Black Entrepreneurs Historical Exhibit
We have a brand new exhibit at the Federal Reserve Underground, a rented space on Jokaydia SLurl http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia/161/245/22, and organizer Oothoon Ogg would love to get feedback from others interested in education and black history in SL. She is in the process of designing a program for the exhibit and would like to get a sense from other people how easy it is to grasp the content, how interesting is it, what is missing, and any general comments. My friend Jaque Quijote did this lovely build, and it is a smaller version of an exhibit in RL that has just opened at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and will soon open in a second location at the Museum of African American History in Boston. his exhibition focuses on enterprising black entrepreneurs of the 18th and 19th centuries in New England.
Since the Colonial era African Americans have contributed to the economic development of this country. They have engaged in small-scale and large-scale commercial enterprises -- ranging from home-based businesses and small shops to regional, national, and international companies. Like their mainstream counterparts, African Americans have developed products, selected markets, created economic networks, invested strategically, and sought to balance risks and rewards, costs and profits.
In America blacks built on African economic traditions in the context of the New World economy. Many had participated as producers, brokers, traders, and merchants in the complex market economies of West and Central Africa before their involuntary arrival on American shores. Blacks seized opportunities to create enterprises and to participate in the commercial life of a developing nation. Despite challenges posed by slavery and racism, African Americans' entrepreneurial activity has been sustained in America for almost five centuries, from the agrarian economy of the seventeenth century to the contemporary post-industrial economy.
This exhibit introduces visitors to such significant figures as Harriet Jacobs, who was one of the first published African American authors in the United States (her semi-biographical novel is listed on a brief list of suggestions for further reading and sources that the creator of the exhibit used), and Paul Cuffe, a philanthropist and investor who began as a sailor and merchant. The exhibit is visually rich and distinctive, as well as informative and inspiring in these difficult economic times. It is a powerful reminder of the long history that African Americans have of uniting their pursuit of freedom with the pursuit of financial security, not simply for the betterment of the individual, but for the betterment of the black community, and of the country as a whole.
Since the Colonial era African Americans have contributed to the economic development of this country. They have engaged in small-scale and large-scale commercial enterprises -- ranging from home-based businesses and small shops to regional, national, and international companies. Like their mainstream counterparts, African Americans have developed products, selected markets, created economic networks, invested strategically, and sought to balance risks and rewards, costs and profits.
In America blacks built on African economic traditions in the context of the New World economy. Many had participated as producers, brokers, traders, and merchants in the complex market economies of West and Central Africa before their involuntary arrival on American shores. Blacks seized opportunities to create enterprises and to participate in the commercial life of a developing nation. Despite challenges posed by slavery and racism, African Americans' entrepreneurial activity has been sustained in America for almost five centuries, from the agrarian economy of the seventeenth century to the contemporary post-industrial economy.
This exhibit introduces visitors to such significant figures as Harriet Jacobs, who was one of the first published African American authors in the United States (her semi-biographical novel is listed on a brief list of suggestions for further reading and sources that the creator of the exhibit used), and Paul Cuffe, a philanthropist and investor who began as a sailor and merchant. The exhibit is visually rich and distinctive, as well as informative and inspiring in these difficult economic times. It is a powerful reminder of the long history that African Americans have of uniting their pursuit of freedom with the pursuit of financial security, not simply for the betterment of the individual, but for the betterment of the black community, and of the country as a whole.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Club Zion
Jamaica's ladies were out in force on a Saturday night when I dropped into Zion on the Excellens sim to see what was happening. With DJ Flight on the turntables, the dance floor was hot, and the dance hall girls were smokin', and somehow it didn't matter that it was mostly a girls' night out! (Where, oh where, are all the men tonight?) On Friday nights, from 7 to 9 SLT, the club presents a mix of lovers' rock, dancehall, roots and reggae with DJ Lion4zion, and on Tuesdays, DJ Jah-Jah focuses on a lovers' groove, also from 7 to 9 SLT. Come out and enjoy the 360 degrees of good vibrations, and share them with your friends. Owner jaja windlow invites visitors to join the VIP group to get regular updates to the calendar of events; this is definitely a place worth landmarking. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Excellens/86/76/34/
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Mardi Gras in SL
I've been neglecting to put in a plug for my own homebase in SL, the New Toulouse community. If you want to get a real feel for what Mardi Gras is like, this is the place to go! Louhi Gothly, Gabrielle Riel and my neighbors are working hard putting the finishing touches on their floats and throws for a parade on Sunday the 22nd, and everyone in New Toulouse and Algiers is really looking forward to the celebration. Right now, a Mardi Gras hunt is going on too, so stop by and have some fun! http://slurl.com/secondlife/New%20Toulouse/144/174/23/
Friday, February 13, 2009
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.
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.
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