Now that Linden Lab has launched the beta version of its Senra mesh starter avatars, I decided to take a stab at creating a comparison chart, comparing and contrasting six options for free or inexpensive (L$250 or less) female mesh bodies. (I will probably follow up with a similar chart for free/inexpensive male mesh bodies, female mesh heads, and male mesh heads.)
The six seven mesh bodies I have chosen for this chart are:
Senra Jamie, by Linden Lab (UPDATE March 16th, 2024: These are now out of beta test, and finalized to version 1.0)
Erika Zero X, by Kalhene
Atenea, by LucyBody
Classic Meshbody (often referred to as TMP)
eBody Classic (free version)
eBody Curvy (free version)
UPDATE Aug. 4th, 2023: After some hemming and hawing, I have decided to include the open-source Ruth 2.0 mesh bodies in this spreadsheet. You can find a list of vendors for Ruth 2.0-based mesh bodies here (scroll down to the Ruth2 section). While clothing specifically designed for Ruth 2.0 bodies is limited, with a good set of BoM/system alphas, some Maitreya Lara clothing and standard-size clothing does fit.
UPDATE March 15th, 2024: You used to have to pay to join the Erika Mesh Body group to pick up the free group gift of the Erika Zero X mesh body, but you can now join the group for free! I have updated my comparison chart to version 1.3 with this updated information. This is a lovely female mesh body which responds very well to the body sliders, allowing you a wide variety of body shapes, from thin and slim to “thicc” and curvy!
Please note that I have deliberately excluded some mesh bodies, for example, the free Altamura bodies you can pick up at various locations (because you cannot change the skin, and you cannot use Bakes on Mesh with them). I have also left out those bodies which have poor or even non-existent third-party designer support. An example of this would be the Ultra Vixen mesh body, which is now only free to avatars under 30 days old and—as far as I am aware—only has clothing that fits it, which is made and sold by the body’s creator.
Looking forward to hearing your comments and suggestions!
I’ve been active in the virtual world of Second Life for almost 15 years now (since 2007), and one of the things I have learned (which also applies to the newer crop of social VR apps and the suddenly-ubiquitous NFT metaverse platforms) is the following lesson: people are willing to invest a significant amount of time, energy, and money in their avatars!
But what I do find extremely interesting about Second Life (which has a userbase which skews significantly older than, say, VRChat or Rec Room) is that people almost uniformly confirm to looking as young as possible! In my peregrinations and perambulations across the grid, I can often go for weeks at a time before I see another avatar who appears middle-aged, or (God forbid!) a senior citizen. SL is full of clubs and nightspots where everybody seems to be young, pert, taut, and beautiful (even the men!). Why is that? Why does nobody question the status quo?
Well, I think that what happens in virtual worlds is a reflection of what happens in real life, with all its distortions and biases. Modern society does not treat aging well, especially the aging of women, who are often seen as undesirable as the grey hairs and wrinkles accumulate over time. The entire beauty industry is built upon the irresistible allure of keeping aging at bay: cosmetics, hair dyes, plastic surgery procedures. I could write an entire separate blogpost about how Instagram filters are impacting real-world beauty standards in a sort of endless, soul-less feedback loop.
But what if we were to use the metaverse as a fresh opportunity to restore some balance and some much-needed sanity to modern society’s obsessive worship of youth, and disdain of aging? Previous societies (and Indigenous cultures) valued their elders instead of dismissing, disrespecting, and discarding them.
Second Life, with its multi-year head-start over the many newer metaverse platforms, has seen a small but growing movement of products to allow for the more visible avatar representation of seniors, as can be seen by the portraits of three avatars which I share with you today: Grace, Mr. Read. and (one of my favourites!) Rose Queen.
Grace
Grace is a proud senior citizen whose glorious grey hair and wrinkles make her stand out in any SL crowd of twentysomethings, and whose profile reads in part:
I visit various places to show that, even in a place like Second Life, where everybody seems to be young and beautiful, old age can (and should) be represented as well.
Grace is wearing:
Mesh Head and Body: the Clodet three-ages mesh body by Altamura comes in three versions in one package: young, middle-aged, and older as shown here (I believe you can buy the various ages separately).
Hair: the Brenda hair from Alli&Ali comes in a greyscale (white/grey/black) fatpack with a variety of beautiful ombre tones such as the one I used for these pictures.
Eyes: the perfect finishing touch, these grey eyes are a current free unisex group gift from Gloom called the Hercules collection, which you can pick up if you join the L’Homme Magazine group for free (they come in four different colours and three different sizes, in system/Bakes on Mesh, Omega, and LeLutka versions)
Shoes: Deborah flats by Baby Monkey (warning: store is on an adult sim!)
Jewelry: the Daphne choker, earrings, and bracelet from Beloved Jewelry were prizes from a long-ago hunt I participated in, and include an extensive HUD to change the metals and gemstones
Mr. Read
I admit that once I saw this completely free outfit from Kauna, I knew I was going to create this look! To me, the book and the pipe are the perfect finishing touches (yes, I admit, there’s a little bit of Hugh Hefner in the mix, as well as The Most Interesting Man in the World advertising campaign!).
Mr. Read is wearing:
Mesh Head, Eyes, and Skin: the Victor head from LOGO allows you to adjust the level of wrinkles from young to old, and anywhere in-between! Very versatile if you’re going for an older gentleman look, and highly recommended.
Hair: this part was easy; it’s the free hair from the Leonard starter avatar, already in your inventory!
Outfit: the entire outfit—smoking jacket and shirt, trousers, socks, and shoes—is available for free from the tiny Kauna menswear store on Jo Yardley’s Time Portal sim! Kauna is one of the hidden gems of menswear in SL, and includes retro styles from the 1920s, 1930, and 1940s as well as a wide variety of more modern suits and tuxedos. You’ll have to buy everything in bundles for L$0 from the vendor panels and then unpack it all, but it’s worth the effort!
Book: the Everybook comes with a HUD with 5 different Bento hand poses, and was a free 10th anniversary gift from Contraption, home to all kinds of weird and wonderful steampunk accessories!
Pipe: this wonderful pipe with its particle smoke effects was an old gacha prize from Kauna
Rose Queen
Rose Queen (yes, that is her honest-to-God, legacy Second Life name!) is the avatar I use for Victorian/steampunk roleplay purposes. You can usually find her strolling through steampunk neighbourhoods like the Caledon, Mieville, and New Babbage sims, exchanging pleasantries with the other residents. I first wrote about Rose back in 2018, when I upgraded her from a classic, system avatar to the all-mesh look you now see here.
Rose Queen is wearing:
Mesh Head and Skin: Vivien Bento mesh head by LAQ (you can adjust the wrinkles on this as well)
Outfit: the Respectable dress comes from HotDog, one of my absolute favourite period/vintage/gothic/horror stores on the grid! I would buy out the whole store if I could afford it! I bought the entire fatpack of this glorious dress at their last Black Friday sale, just so I could mix and match all the different colours of the top, skirt, and lace detail to my heart’s delight. I call this particular combination Rose’s “Victorian widow weeds” 😉
Hair: this is another Alli&Ali hairstyle, called Lucille
For more pictures of Rose, please see my earlier blogpost, which includes full styling credits.
Now, I don’t want to paint a picture that Second Life is some perfect nirvana for seniors. Unfortunately, there’s an absolutely dire shortage of virtual places in Second Life where senior (and senior-appearing) avatars can meet and chat (and NO, I am NOT talking about the small number of adult-rated sims which cater to the dirty-old-grandpa crowd). Where in the fresh hell are the spaces where the age and accumulated wisdom of our elders are welcomed and celebrated, instead of just treated as a sexual fetish?
Forgive me; I just turned 58 a couple of weeks ago, and I fear I am rapidly becoming a cranky old man myself! If you’re into fetishes like findom (link is safe for work), well, there’s a place for you in Second Life, too (far, far away from the rest of us!). After all, it is your Second Life; you do you, boo. 😉
So the (im)pertinent question this old man would pose to all the metaverse newcomers is this: how well will your worlds support the older users who want to see themselves represented? Or are your worlds going to be only for the uniformly young?
UPDATE February 17th, 2022: Wow, this blogpost has received more comments—and I have received more feedback from people via Reddit—than any other recent blogpost which I can remember. I clearly have struck a nerve!
And I want to make it very clear that I am NOT advocating that people who use Second Life must have an avatar that looks like them in real life, if they happen to be older. As I always say: it’s your Second Life; be whoever (or whatever) you wish. Follow your fantasy and your desire!
And one person on the AltspaceVR Discord server, named Wookie Picard, had this absolutely wonderful comment, which I got permission to share in full with you here:
Thanks for posting this. I’ve been doing virtual worlds for about 20 years, first Second Life and now Altspace. I’m almost 70. My hair in Altspace has plenty of gray. I get called granny. I get told him too old to be in there. But mostly I get ignored. I’ve done a test. When I change my hair to a more youthful color, more people talk to me. I’m proud to represent “my people .” The funny comments include “Who bought you the headset?” “Who taught you how to use it?” I have some snarky replies. I tell them that every morning my nurse gets me out of bed and wheels my wheelchair over to the desk and puts the headset on my head. When I tell them my age and they say “Good for You!!!” I reply, “Yeah, good for me! I’ve managed not to die yet.” Yes. Representation matters. I’ve heard people say they like avatars because they can look younger. I say, come out of the closet! We deserve to be in virtual worlds and we deserve to be respected for our experience. Our people created all this stuff!
Genesis Lab is offering yet another steep discount on a Bento mesh head for female avatars. This one is called Cat Calm, and if you join the GenesisLab group for free, you can pick one up for only L$55, a 99% discount!
As you can see, this head has a striking, angular, chiseled appearance, with a sharp, defined jawline and high cheekbones:
The package includes Bakes on Mesh skin in six different skin tones with brown brows, light brows, and no brows options, but I decided to use a recent group gift Bakes on Mesh skin I picked up from Wow Skins instead, called Elora Bronze. Here is what the Cat Calm head looks like without any adjustments to the head or body sliders:
The cellphone HUD on the right is the Material Editor, which allows you to change various aspects of different parts of the head: tint, full bright, transparency/blend, glossiness, etc. The default head comes with an absolutely hideous white, diamond-shaped tattoo under one eye (?!??), which I immediately removed by clicking on the Tattoo button, then the reset arrow icon in the upper right-hand corner of the phone.
To the left are five of the mini-HUDs that control eyeshadows, eye colours (the mesh eyes are included in the package), hairbases, eyelashes, and lipsticks. (You can also tint and adjust all of these features using the Material Editor HUD.)
Here’s what the head looks after I made some slider adjustments to the mouth area, and with some hair (a free gift I picked up at last year’s Hair Fair called Lara Winks):
One of the things that drives me crazy is when stores do not include adequate documentation in their mesh head or body packages. There is a single notecard in the Cat Calm package that mentions a few new features, and nothing else at all! Even worse, unlike some more popular heads, I could not find a brand website with any online documentation, either, which many brands offer. It’s basically trial and error here, folks.
In particular, the included facial animation override is absurdly tiny, with lettering that is impossible to decipher, and I had to make guesses at what the various buttons did. Not impressed, Genesis Lab.
This is a strikingly beautiful head, and at L$55 it is a real bargain.
UPDATE June 3rd, 2020: Here’s another look, once again pairing the Cat Calm head by Genesis Lab with the Classic Meshbody group gift, and using the included Bakes-on-Mesh skin tone number 5 with brown eyebrows:
I have a little test I perform to judge how attractive a female avatar is: I plunk her down next to the dancefloor at Frank’s Jazz Club (as I have in the picture below), and I wait to see how long it takes before some male avatar hits on her. This one? I broke my old record! Less than 15 seconds! And there were two of them! (Yes, I am evil. But I don’t catfish. I just ignore their instant messages.)
I think this avatar look compares quite favourably with a Maitreya Lara mesh body/Catwa Bento mesh head combination which would set you back at least L$7,750 (and that’s before you spend any money on skin appliers, hair, clothing, shoes, etc.).
The hair, gown, gold choker, shoes, and AO were all freebies I picked up somewhere along the way. So the total cost for this entire avatar was only L$56 (just L$55 for the head, and L$1 for the body)…truly an outstanding bargain for a beautiful avatar!
Mermaid and merman role-play in Second Life is perennially popular (sometimes combined with pirate role-play). I have had a mermaid avatar in Second Life for as long as I can remember, although I must confess that I do not pull her out that often nowadays.
Here is what my mermaid avatar looked like before her makeover, a system-layers-and-flexiprims look cobbled together from various freebie mermaid outfits I picked up over the years (the lovely mesh tail was a recent free hunt gift from Solas NaGealai of BlueMoon Enterprise):
Mermaid: Before Look
Well, I decided to give my mermaid one of my patented fifteen-minute avatar makeovers today, to move from a classic, system avatar to 100% mesh!
Here is what she looks like now:
Mermaid: After Look
This avatar is wearing:
Mesh Head: the Freya Bento mesh head from Catwa (free group gift; the Catwa group is free to join; more information here). TODAY IS THE LAST DAY YOU CAN PICK UP THIS FABULOUS FREEBIE!
Lipstick: HD Lipstick (part of the Freya package, this comes in a wide variety of colours).
Hair: this absolutely perfect mermaid hair is called Spring Briar Fae Hair, which I picked up for free at a Crazy Hair Hunt many years ago now. I combined it with a hairbase from the Catwa Master HUD, tinting both it and the eyebrows on the Freya head to match.
Choker: This beautiful golden Nefert choker is a free group gift from Poison Rouge at the current round of the Très Chic shopping event (you can join the Très Chic group for free). It hides the slight mismatch between the skin tones on the Freya head and Classic body perfectly!
Mermaid Bra and Tail: This is a freebie, too! Just join the Arata Shouten group for free, and check the group notices for this lovely gift (which was my impetus for making this blogpost). You’ll need to alpha out your legs, of course, using the included Classic Meshbody HUD.
Mermaid Animation Override: I picked up this mermaid AO as part of a free hunt gift at FallnAngel Creations many years ago. (If you hunt around at the various mermaid role-play areas in SL, you might find a freebie mermaid/merman AO.)
TOTAL COST FOR THIS AVATAR LOOK: ONLY L$1! (for the Classic mesh body from Meshbody). Everything else was free!
