The Rose-Tinted Avatar

So, recently I've been enjoying the wonders of the Playstation 3. Apart from the very old TV that it's hooked up to, which occasionally turns itself off, it's a virtual dream world. Naturally, the TV always loses picture when I'm right in the middle of shoving my sword through the torso of a bad guy, so I have to pause, move my TV around on my desk until the picture comes back and then rejoin the fray. Now, if you're not a gamer, you won't understand just how irritating this is, but when you're in the middle of combat, it's all about momentum. Once you get used to a particular game, your attacks on the enemy start to look like a violent sort of dance. You dodge and sweep and twirl and jump, and all the while bad guys are dropping to the floor like HSBC cashiers during a bank robbery. It's beautiful, in a savage sort of way. Unfortunately, when my TV loses picture, I miss a step, forget the rest of the 'dance' and, invariably, get stabbed to death in a range of new and exciting ways. This annoyance aside, I am loving the PS3. What I really love is one of its basic, default programmes. When you log in, you have the option of entering Playstation 'Home', which is a place where your avatar (virtual character) can take part in a range of different games and wander through different environments. You can also interact with other people who are online at the same time. However, the first thing you have to do is create your avatar.

Now, in the real world, the way we look is determined by our genes. Genes make us unique in so many ways, and physical appearance is just one of them, an obvious exception being monozygotic twins, who look identical and freak me out slightly, although the latter point is irrelevant. With genes being a primary determinant of our appearance, one would assume that the way we look can't be changed to any significant degree, unless you're dating a cosmetic surgeon, in which case, neither gravity nor age have any real meaning until you're too old to care. Fortunately, the modern world has been kind enough to provide us with numerous ways of adapting our natural image. For girls, this usually involves wearing make-up, buying fashionable clothes and shoes, spending money on hair and nails, a lifetime of Weight Watchers meetings and many years spent investigating the different ways of making rice crackers taste less like feet. For guys, well I don't know. I assume that hair gel and the odd new t-shirt is involved, but who can say for sure? Annoyingly, you get the odd girl who makes no effort and still manages to look like Kate Moss, pre-cocaine. These are the girls I normally avoid, for two reasons - 1) Public drop-kicking is illegal 2) I like to protect my self-esteem from dying on its arse. For the record, my wardrobe is devoid of green. I think we can all agree it's not a good colour on me.

Anyway, the time came for me to create my avatar. Suddenly, I was faced with a world of possibilities. I could essentially etch-a-sketch my flaws and whitewash my image - I was being given a free pass to recreate myself. Naturally, I immediately reduced the width of my face. This was swiftly followed by a change of skin tone, which became a lot less 'Preston' and a lot more 'Puerto Rico'. I also exposed my upper arms and became the happy owner of two new assets that, in reality, are conspicuous only by their absence. I dropped my height a good few inches - no longer a giant - awesome, gave myself brown eyes, chose a hairstyle that I could never pull off in real life and shazaam. Judge me. I dare you. Hell, we're all guilty of the same crime. We all build an image to fit an environment. We don't wear clubbing clothes to work, we don't wear work clothes to the pub, and the way we act around family is not the same as the way we act around friends. Ok, the Playstation example is a bit extreme - a total reinvention of image is not typical of daily life, but that's because it's not feasible in daily life. If you could press a button to delete your flaws, would you? If you said 'yes' you wouldn't be alone. Playstation 'Home' is filled with people who have whitewashed their image. I see this as a sign that deep down we all want to be the best we can be. Of course, we tend to judge ourselves against others, so if we all fix our flaws, we could drive ourselves crazy on a pointless quest to reach unrealistic levels of perfection.

In the end, I made my avatar look more like me. For a little while, she was close to my idea of perfect, but it left me feeling too disconnected. That's the weird thing about gaming - you use it to escape, to cut through the red tape of reality, but if you change too many elements, it loses its personal relevance, and anything that comes from the virtual experience is received only by your avatar and not by you. Surprisingly, once I made my avatar look more like me, I felt more comfortable. For a while, I had a ticket to perfection, and I traded it in to be exactly who I am. People say the grass is always greener on the other side and I think this is true, but people forget what this saying means in the event that they actually get to the other side. It means that in a world where your reality and ideals are divided by a theoretical fence, you are destined to oscillate between the two, and every time you climb over that fence and reach the other side, you realise that what you left behind is actually more valuable than the thing you were trying so desperately to attain. It's a never-ending cycle. With this in mind, appreciate what you've got while you've got it because anything else comes only from rose-tinted glasses.