Color Me Fit: weight loss, fitness, exercise

August 16th will mark my first year in Second Life, an online virtual world in which one can build items, create clothing and design their own avatars, among many other things. In the past few months, busy with other things, I hadn’t logged in there a lot; however, I still come back to this community very regularly, if only because I sell clothes there and like pleasing my customers.

What does this have to do with weight loss and fitness, one may ask?

Well, for starters, my avatar is a clothes freak. No, really. In the game, I own a gazillion outfits and pair of shoes. Kimonos, sexy dresses, nice short tops, sleek trousers, high-high boots, dancing shoes… You name it, I’ve probably bought it. This is so unlike the real-life me, would I think first, and then stand corrected: this is so unlike the real-life me who doesn’t dare buying too many clothes, because, all that simply… they seldom really fit. It’s not that I don’t want to be well-dresses, or don’t want to try and spare some money to do so later on… It’s just that I knew I’d look ridiculous in any kind of “sexy” clothes, so I never cared about spending money on stuff I’d never dare to wear in public.

But in Second Life… In Second Life, my avatar is slender (might as well be slender in an online world, at least, if I can’t be like this in real life… right?). She always has a nice haircut that she can change at will every day, no matter the length or color or complexity. She wears top-notch makeup, nicely designed by a friend of mine who, in the virtual world, dabbles in tatoos and body skins (mine is a very pale, slightly blueish skin; very pretty). She doesn’t have to fear cellulite appearing out of nowhere on her 3D-modeled body, she doesn’t have to worry about doing some mandatory one-hour of cardio every day, and every time I bring her into a store, she knows that all clothes will fit, simply because they’ll be mapped around her the right way by the game engine. Ah, if life could be that easy as well, eh!

Walking into a store, and knowing that whatever I’ll buy, I’ll look great in it… Part of me wants to think that “the day I’m thin”, this dream will become a truth; then another part of me very well knows that it may not be the case at all: even at a normal weight, I’ll likely still have broad shoulders and wide hips, given that slicing bits off my bones isn’t exactly part of my weight loss plan. I suppose that the frustration could last to no end. I suppose that it also looks a little pathetic, that I rely on some 3D-model in an online world to free my clothes-liking self — or this inner part of myself that want to view herself as “thin”. Is this so surprising, though? Don’t we have the right to dream a little, even if it’s on a computer and not looking at the models in the lastest issue of Cosmopolitan?

Sometimes, yes, sometimes, I wonder. However, I also know that even if I were the most perfect-looking girl on Earth, I wouldn’t be able to wear all of these clothes in real life (let’s say some of them are really… special and not suited for daily circumstances). Looks like people who’re part of “the thin crowd” are in the same boat here: none of us would walk into the office on a Monday morning wearing a kimono or a dress that barely covers the essential, whether we’re thin or not, and even if we find ourselves swooning over said clothes. Some outfits are just that impossible to wear, I guess.

I still haven’t managed to answer my questions regarding all of this. Do I like shopping in Second Life so much because I anyway like owning nice clothes, or is it just some kind of non-admitted way of letting my frustrations out, my frustrations of not having a nice body, of having to work my ass off in order to lose the weight and not gaining it back, unlike the thin girl, there, next door, whom I see eating candy on a daily basis and never taking a gram?

Perhaps I’ll never know.

It’s however still interesting to try to figure out.

- Kery