It’s not like me to notice my rez day, but this year I did. Portia Capelo is 14 in SL years. And my blog is 13. I thought I would celebrate with some old pix of Portia but as I looked for my faves I remembered that Portia wasn’t the only model to grace Pleisure’s pages.
At first, Portia had a friend, my alt Loica. Portia’s mouth started medium-size but got smaller (although the top lip remained bigger than the bottom). Eventually her philtrum would shrink into an unremarkable shape. Loica’s mouth was rounder, with a wide V marking her upper lip. Her nose was wider, her chin larger. Loica was meant to be both bigger and shorter, real-er, sexier. In fact, the demon I started to date told me he much preferred my alt’s look, but I favored Portia. Until Anorak came along.*
I fell in love. In the birth announcement for Anorak I wrote “She’s stumpy, she’s dumpy. With a huge statuesque head.” She was my un-model. Anorak would end up with a much wider mouth, a more masculine jaw. She had a more youthful appearance and appeal than Portia did. Anorak looked like she might get into trouble because she was too much fun.
I am no fun at all. Ironically, Anorak would become the image I most closely identify with. This is because her look evolved into that of an av who was not about fun but about a kind of grumpy always-observing intelligence.
I almost forgot Hedda. She has a longer face, wider-set eyes. As you can see in this photo, Hedda was born when all the models looked fashionably miserable on account of the downturned corners of their lips. Despite the fact that this model’s name was Hedda I usually called her Stones. Stones was friends with Sticks, another model I only featured once or twice. Those names suggest that I was always pulling for real stuff and always ending up with some kind of modish ideal.
Early on I became a Glam Affair fan and my models still wear their skins the most. I like the way the creator underplays the detail and offers an adult look. Over the years I have loved &bean, Dutch Touch, Mother Goose’s, JesyLilo, and Birdy, all of which are gone.
I’ll never forget LAQ, which, like Glam Affair, is still around. LAQ made my first skin, a freebie I was told to snag by a trio of avatars who kidnapped me from one of those halls of free silks and sky-high shoes. (Later I bought the face you see here.) This gang dragged me around the grid till Portia only occasionally evoked the nightmare of Ruth. (You don’t know who Ruth was? She was the default alt when I joined in 2009. She wore a pink polka-dot dress. You don’t know what it means to be Ruthed? It didn’t matter how good you looked or how confident you felt. There was no protection against suddenly being turned back into Ruth when you were relogging for the tenth time that hour.)
*I realized later that Anorak is an insult in the UK. The coat itself was appropriated from Greenland natives. I knew the origin of the name but didn’t think of it as exoticization. I was ignorant, a middle-aged woman recalling a beloved coat from the past.
Pleisure, a Second Life Fashion Blog 