Talk:Molly Robison
Molly did a thorough job of defining the process she went through to create her avatars, as well as the emotions she felt and insights she gained while creating them. Molly was comprehensive in describing the issues she faced during the self-portrait process - she outlined the shortcomings of the software from both the usability prospective of how awkward it was to combine parent’s traits for the user and how this often yielded unsatisfactory traits, as well as iterating her concerns with the generic and stereotypical nature of many of the traits for female avatars. Molly was capable of describing well how the portrayal of women within the software differed from her own opinion without being overly cynical or abrasive, which made the piece both interesting to read and feel much more personal. Molly then went on to outline her portrayal of an androgynous female avatar for her fantasy character, which seemed quite difficult given parameters of the software. She discussed both the social implications of why she created her fantasy avatar in the way she did, as well as the technical challenges of creating it. By doing so, she undertook another way of redefining how difficult personal portrayal is in an online environment, by challenging how gender affects physical appearance. Molly augmented her arguments on gender by using her two sources to add weight to the difficulties of virtually representing women – something that cemented her discussion away from her personal opinion, and closer to a society-wide concern. – Lynette Wall
I was constantly interested in your experience throughout the structure of your reflection. Your outline created a good flow while reading your reflection. Many other students discussed their difficulties with the software, but I appreciated hearing about your experience with the struggles of figuring out exactly what you look like before even trying to correctly portray it within your personal avatar. I like how you did include your issues with how the program and how it was a balancing act between your identity and the options of the software. For your virtual avatar, including how you wanted your identity to really represent you, although not necessarily possible physically, was an important point to make, and you made it well. I can see how body image was incorporated into the avatars.
I see that you used resources from Aleah Tierney’s What Women Want and Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Because I am not very familiar with these topics, and although you didn reference to them once or twice, I would be interested to see more on how those two possibly helped you figure out what your avatar would look or be like. Also, if you could mention more on how you think women are sexualized in avatars.
I really enjoyed reading about your experience with avatars and how it helped you look deeper into yourself. Your identities do matter, and this assignment did a great job of helping all of us realize those identities and how they are presented in online versus offline interactions.
-Fred Reilly
