Talk:Jennifer Wei

Jennifer referred to her personal experience with identifying as an American, and being looked at by others as an Asian female as one outside source of information to anchor her reflection. The challenge of self-identifying with one ethnicity, and being considered another ethnicity by society was critical to which templates she selected from Evolver for her personal avatar. In addition, she refers to her Women’s Studies major and education when explaining her thought process on gender specificity and feminism in creating her avatar. This gives insight to the reader on the purpose of her physical features and selections she chose for both her avatars. Overall, she brought outside sources of information to anchor her reflection, but I would have liked to see her incorporate a movie, TV show, or pop culture reference with her reflection. I found it very interesting that Jennifer began her reflection referring to gender issues and stereotypes in social identities and how they were reflected in Evolver through the “white, male norm.” However, I thought she could have expanded the idea of Evolver’s emphasis on gender-specificity, and elaborate more on what physical features or clothing empowered men? In describing the construction of her avatar, she mentions the personal conflict she faced in terms of defining her identity through ethnicity. This is an important cultural issue in relation to social identities in virtual environments. Another issue Jennifer denotes is her challenge in creating a “feminist” look for her fantasy avatar. As a society, we associate men with power, strength, and mental toughness; therefore, it was difficult for Jennifer to incorporate these traits and expressions in building her female avatars. Because feminism relates to gender specificity, I thought this was a great way of linking your reflection on constructing your avatars to social identities in virtual environments. All in all, Jennifer explicitly expresses her opinions on gender issues in avatars among virtual environments and connects them to the construction of her avatars well. However, I felt she could have added more on her personal goals, self-identity, and ambitions in real life and how they were represented by her avatars.

The two large parts of Jen's identity is that she is a female and a feminist. In terms of Asian avatars, I agree with her in the fact that there seemed to be few skins for it. However the same could be said for almost every skin color, except for the skin color of Caucasians. In terms of the feminism aspect, it is an interesting side of this avatar creation program. Jen says that there is not enough "feminist" clothing. However there is always another side to this idea. She says that revealing clothing is not feminist clothing because it is revealing and guys like that sort of thing. Another side of the feminist debate is by being comfortable in one's skin, a female is showing strong will and being a feminist. With this train of thought, one could also argue that there is feminist garb in this program. It just happens to be Jen's specific version of feminism that is not supported by the program. Realizing this would be one way for Jen to increase her own self awareness.

I think Jennifer's reflection is based too heavily on the social reactions to certain physical traits and not enough of the creation process itself. For example she gives an instance with her fantasy avatar, saying if she were to take her fantasy avatar into an online gaming environment she would be subjected to oppression and discrimination. I would agree with this statement but I would like to add that the online gaming world is easily dominated by males. Anytime a minority object or person enters a situation it is not difficult to see why it would bring attention. For example if I were to place 10 pens in front of someone, and 9 of them were blue and one of them is red, people would be more likely to see the red pen first because it easily stands out. I agree with Jennifer's point that there are not ideally as many clothing options as one would like, but the evolver program does not suggest for women to wear revealing clothing. It would be the case if they did not allow women to pick choices that covered up certain body parts. This is not the case, Jennifer's avatar remains a female and it allowed her to pick a clothing choice that covered the chest area. Jennifer takes a stab at the program stating that there are only tight fighting clothing for women, but then this is conflicted with her disappointment in the program for lacking the option of colored skinny jeans. Her avatar reflection arguments need to be more carefully worded to support her opinions.