I have a horrible confession to make: a guilty, shameful, secret pleasure.
Every couple of days, I must pop into the r/Botchedsurgeries subReddit community on Reddit, just to see what horrible plastic surgery that men and women (who often suffer from a mental health condition called Body Dysmorphic Disorder or BDD) undergo in order to make themselves look more “handsome” or “beautiful”.
It’s a never-ending hot mess, a combination train wreck-dumpster fire that appalls me, yet I cannot look away. I routinely click through to see the pictures of botched plastic surgery results—butt implants that stick out like shelves, facial filler that gives unnaturally sharp cheekbones and chins, eyebrow lifts that make people look like they should speak Vulcan, breast implants that look like overinflated balloons that are about to pop at any second.
And I was reminded of my guilty, shameful secret today when I reviewed a new, free mesh body, a recent addition to The Stay at Home Club freebies website. It is called the Ruthie female mesh body by a store called Tiny Things.
CAUTION: The Tiny Things store is located on an Adult-rated sim, which is run by somebody who. ummm… (how can I put this delicately?) caters to certain fetishes. The main sim is pretty safe, but if you decide to take one of the teleports to some of the other platforms on the sim, you might see something you’d rather wish you hadn’t. CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED.
Just teleport here, walk into the absurdly tiny store, and click on the panel to get your free Ruthie body:
This body is Bento, and works with Bakes on Mesh skins (you can also buy an Omega system kit to apply Omega skins to Tiny Things mesh bodies). I decided to pair this Stay at Home Club gift with another Stay at Home freebie, the Ciara Bento Bakes on Mesh head from Dream (which I blogged about previously here). For the skin, I used one of the Elvira Bakes-on-Mesh skins I picked up from the Advent/Christmas tree at 7 Deadly Skins last December (this skin tone is called Maple).
Here is what she looks like, wearing the dress that comes in the package, plus the free Sonnet pumps from Hilly Haalan (the feet appear to be Slink-compatible, although the included foot height for the Sonnet pumps made the base of the feet turn white, so I had to set it aside and then just adjust the shoes by hand to fit). Oh, and you only get the high-heeled foot option, there are zero settings to adjust the feet for medium-height shoes or flats. UPDATE May 17th, 2020: I have tested rigged Slink-compatible shoes on these feet and they do not work, so your shoe options are going to severely restricted for this particular mesh body.
This is an avatar with an ample bosom! This is pretty much the SMALLEST that I could make her breasts using the body sliders (I think they are set at 25 in this picture). If I turned the sliders any lower, the breasts would collapse into horrible shapes, and they would begin to poke through this dress, which is supposed to be designed to fit this body perfectly!
And you should see what they look like if you crank the sliders up to 100! (I think the store name “Tiny Things” is meant to be ironic.) I would post a picture, but it would shock the children 😉 ….
I have included the HUD in the picture above to show you the alpha sections available. Like the freebie versions of the eBody Classic and Curvy female mesh avatar bodies, there are only “thick” alpha sections on the HUD, so you will have to be somewhat careful what you wear with this free body. This body simply won’t work with a lot of the skin-baring clothing that it was intended to wear…unless of course it’s Bakes-on-Mesh layers or older, system avatar clothing with flexiprims.
One thing that I do like about the Ruthie body is you can tint the fingernails any colour you desire using the Color tab on the HUD (you can also tint the skin and the nipples separately). You wanna be a green alien? Go for it!
However, because it is a custom mesh body, and not one of the “Big Four” (Maitreya, Belleza, Slink or Meshbody Legacy), you are likely going to have some serious trouble finding clothing to fit this avatar properly.
I tried out several items of clothing from the Baby Monkey capsule wardrobe available as a freebie at the Free*Style store (more information here), and there were a few problem areas. Here is the much more modest Clover dress, where I had to alpha out the breasts, torso and pelvic area to make it fit (and I still had problem areas at the neckline, that are hard to see in this picture):
And here is the Merino turtleneck sweater and Thalia jeans from the same capsule wardrobe. This outfit works better, since you basically have alpha’ed out your entire body…but then, really, what’s the point of this avatar? She was obviously designed to show some skin, and perhaps not to wear any clothing at all! (Ruthie will no doubt prove popular on a few of Second Life’s stripper/escort/fetish sims, where there are, amazingly, some avatars still rocking non-mesh, older system avatars…those people have zero excuse not to upgrade to all-mesh now.)
And if you are only going to be able to wear modest clothing such as this, you’re probably better off with a free or inexpensive female mesh bodies that have many, many more features, including a finer set of alpha selections. The Ruthie mesh body was obviously intended for people who want very large-breasted avatars (Hellooo, r/Botchedsurgeries!), and frankly, it doesn’t make any sense to use this body if you wanted a non-botched-surgery figure to start with.
But if you are looking for an avatar with enormous breasts, boy did you come to the right place! Otherwise, you’d be better off with another freebie body (like the recently reviewed, and much more adjustable, Viva Bento mesh body, which offers a lot more bells and whistles than this package).
Hmmm, this blogpost came out a lot crankier than I had intended! Sorry! All I am saying is, drop by and pick the Ruthie body up for yourself if you’re curious, and play with the sliders to see if it works for you. Some people will like it, and some won’t. And, for free, you have nothing to lose! Thank you to Tiny Things for making this free gift available to Second Life users.
UPDATE May 13th, 2020: O.K. I did a little experiment last night. I took my alt, wearing her new Ruthie mesh body and Ciara mesh head, over to Escort Oasis, plunked her down on one of the animated burlesque dancer chairs, signed into the tip jar, and let her dance among all the other working girls:
This is one of those free-lance dancer/stripper/escort places where, as I previously mentioned, some of the avatars trying to make a buck are still using classic system (non-mesh) avatars. (For God’s sake, the woman next to me was wearing truly ancient, 2003-era shoes with invisiprims and bling!) THESE are the people who need the Ruthie body, the target market that Tiny Things is probably aiming for.
Well. I am pleased to announce that just by dancing over the course of yesterday evening (no escorting—after all, a girl has rules 😉 ), I actually earned a L$25 tip, and I won another L$9 from the sploder! Grand total in earnings for the evening: L$34.
So, ironically, it means that this alt, which I created from scratch from head to toe without spending a single Linden dollar, has actually earned me more money than I spent on her! Yes, I have made a net profit on this one! It surprised me, too.
By the way, if you ever do have an avatar short of Linden dollars, this is one of the better spots in Second Life to park yourself on an animated chair, platform, or dance pole, dance your little heart out for a few hours or a half day or so, and take a chance on winning a small mount of Linden dollars (L$2 to L$9) if you are randomly selected when the sploder gives away cash every fifteen minutes.
Of course, it’s an inducement to increase traffic to the Escort Oasis sim, but it is very effective. As long as you don’t have any moral qualms about hanging out in an Adult-rated sim which is meant to be a place where virtual johns meet virtual hookers, why not dress up, go dancing, and maybe earn a few Linden dollars to spend on more fabulous dollarbies and other bargains and deals in SL?
Oh, and I also fiddled with the body sliders a bit more, to make the Ruthie body look a little better in this last picture I took at the Escort Oasis. I made her taller and adjusted a few of her curves to balance out that ample bosom (a little trick I picked up from watching the drag queens on RuPaul’s Drag Race!).
I also retextured the included dress in the Ruthie package to a floral pattern I had in my inventory which I liked better than the design that the dress came with. The group gift Sonnet pumps from Hilly Haalan have a HUD with many colour options to match any outfit, so I picked a tan colour for the shoes to match the dress.
So, my overall opinion of the Ruthie mesh body has gone up a little bit after my burlesque dancing adventures of yesterday evening… I mean, what’s not to love about a free body that actually earns you some coin? 😉
UPDATE May 15th, 2020: O.K., I am now taking back ANYTHING NEGATIVE I HAVE EVER SAID ABOUT THE RUTHIE BODY.
This evening, wearing this body, I earned L$500 dancing for tips at the Escort Oasis (yes, I am truly shameless). In total, this freebie body has earned me L$534! 😉
Also, I have been experimenting with older, system avatar clothing and, of course, with Bakes on Mesh, they have a new life on Bakes-on-Mesh compatible mesh bodies like Ruthie! Here’s an example, a black outfit I picked up for free from the Wise Heron Newbie Mall:
Now, there’s a hint of camel toe going on with this skintight outfit, but if you can live with that, you will find that there are countless, older freebie stores absolutely stuffed to the brim with older system-layer-and-flexiprim clothing that nobody really wants. You are pretty much guaranteed to find something that you like and can repurpose, like this sexy outfit!
Happy freebie shopping!