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Stories from Second Life
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Female Reflection of a Male DJ
by Fairy Winkler Meet SL’s Tim Eastkew. In Real Life, he is known as Tim Drury and he holds down two part-time cleaning jobs, one of which is at Cambridge University in the city where he lives. Tim Eastkew (his avatar) is a DJ at the Night Owl on the isle of Miracles(101,34,24) where he plays a variety of music including mashup remixes from the 9000+ mp3s in his music collection. He describes being a DJ as “the ultimate in self-indulgence” and that he loves sharing music with people, especially tracks that they may not have ever heard before in their lives. What makes Tim Eastkew somewhat unique is the fact that though he is a male in RL and his avatar has a male name, yet his avatar is purposely female. I asked Tim why he chose to create a female avatar after having been “born” into SL in the Fall of 2006 as a male. He replied that there were many reasons but more specifically that “you spend a long time with your AV so it might as well be something you want to look at.” Tim also thinks that female avatars have more clothing options when it comes to dressing up for a night out on the town. No, he is not gay; he is straight. Tim reports that he makes friends more easily as a female than he ever did when he was a male and that he informs his friends that he is indeed a man in RL. Most people are simply accepting of that fact while a few others either cannot understand and/or make silly jokes about it. How does Tim handle being approached in a romantic/sexual way by male avatars? He considers being hit on as a compliment but cuts off quickly any advances. After some reflection when I asked about any difficulties he may be having personality-wise due to behaving and thinking like a man while portraying himself as a woman, Tim replied that he is very pro-voice in SL and uses voice as his primary tool for communication. It becomes quite apparent at one’s first meeting with him that he is a man in RL and that he has a male personality. He admits “both of my AVs have the same personality - mine - though I guess when I use the female AV, a fun kind of silly side of me tends to come out.” In addition to being a DJ in SL, Tim has two galleries in SL where one can view pictures of real life taken by him. Most of his photography is nature shots and sunsets are his favorite to capture. You can catch Tim spinning out some funky tunes at the Night Owl on his regularly scheduled Fridays from 1-3pm SLT. Whew! Quite a busy man Tim is. His motivation for all that he does? He does it just for the fun and satisfaction of pleasing himself and others through the senses of sight and sound. Sounds good to me! (Editorial note): Second life is full of many creative avatars from the traditional male and female, adult and child, to creatures, animals and cybernetics. Avatars are an expression of creativity and diversity and are generally not true physical representations of the real person behind the avatar. Second Life provides the venue for expression of both imagination and reality.
- TAGS:
- secondlife,
- sl,
- dj,
- female,
- avatar
- GROUPS:
- Tech and science
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