As someone who sits on the borders of so-called middle-aged-ness, I have to admit that sometimes it’s a struggle to accept the beauty within. I’m pretty sure it exists there, but

I think I like this tatoo. Perhaps I'll keep it.

sometimes I hit problems with others around me not, er, appreciating it so much.

Fine, you get to a certain age where you realise that you can’t change particular things about yourself, and you ease into something poets would call karma, but most of us reserve as ‘acceptance’. As for our external ‘me’s’ – well, there comes another time – it was possibly when I hit thirteen, that I had to accept I was never going to be model-beautiful, or skinny for that matter. Or tall, or have lovely glossy hair or…[fill in other hang-ups on appearance here]…

Once I turned to social networking (and before that, community forums or boards on the web) I found a renaissance of my inner peculiarities. How to get my own message across, in a way that people would ‘get me’? Living as a New Zealander in the U.K. I had already struck communication problems with many British people taking a little time to understand and throw aside the fact I was talking with a different accent, before noticing what I was actually talking about. On the internet things should have been more blissful.

In some cases they are, in others they aren’t, such is life.

In real life, once I was married, and with a child, things changed again. Our efforts to provide for the next generation, and an income to provide for a house over our head saw my family – and that of many others, move away from home, and long-standing friends. Now, with nothing much else in common from my neighbours other than the fact we all have children of varying ages, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find new people who I might consider legitimate ‘friends’, with similar interests and a common framework of values (and humour).

I turned once again to the internet to seek those friendships out of what might be considered a relatively domestic and often boring life.

But on the internet I had only the one way to communicate – and to gauge other people’s reactions. I couldn’t see their smiles – or frowns – or even work out if they were actually listening. We get around that with various methods, developed for such communications. But many didn’t suit my own life. I didn’t like IMing, even though it was huge in the circles I trod. And although I am on Facebook, I do not feel it’s a natural environment for my written communications.

As a writer, I spend a lot of time communicating in the written form. And a life of solitude is often actually sought after. I’m a natural hobbit anyway, but even that proverbial man in the cave up a mountain needed somebody to know he was in that cave.

Things like Twitter suit me, as do blogs. Blogs let me write and spend time drafting my thoughts so that I can hope my own voice does get across as best possible. From these devices, came an acceptance of my own inner beauty, and a publication of some of it – even if many would reserve the right to question the difference between beauty and ugly.

On Second Life, beauty is a very different matter. So far, the communications channels allowed have left me feeling a little more lonely than is healthy. Although I am friendly and welcome all IMs from strangers or will chat quite readily in stores, I have to admit to finding it difficult to find real friends with some commonality within SL. I say things, meant as a joke, and people don’t stay around to think about it.

Second Life for me is made up of writing appointments – of an hour at a time – normally set outside of my timezone, and finding me tired and really wanting to get to bed. And then there’s the shopping experiences, where I very rarely am approached by strangers in chat – but if I am, I have a paranoia about what they are after, because previously it’s been basically for sex.

As much as I’ve enjoyed those brief conversations with others in public in SL, it’s become apparent that the majority aren’t interested in truly getting to know me, as an avatar, and the person within. Second Life seems a rushed life. Going somewhere, exploring somewhere, shopping, dancing, accepting yet another group push to signup for updates or freebies…moving onto the next place. Perhaps if there were a bus service or train forcing you to share time with strangers…instead teleporting makes for a quick movement from both predicaments and potential pleasures. I love teleporting, but it’s a solitary act, isn’t it?

All I want is a few legitimate friends who care if I don’t appear on Second Life for a few days, and who might like to go shopping – or dancing with me, or come see my chicken-growing experiment on my home turf. I know that most people, no matter what nationality or interest group, hold similar needs (perhaps not the chicken-growing experiment), and would understand this within first or second lives.

But as with real life, finding friendships takes time – and effort, and must be something from both sides, so I am reserved in my expectations there. Until then, I am aware that my inner beauty – something I’ve worked for many decades to accept within myself, has much less to do within Second Life than I may hope for.

So I suddenly found myself with the need to have some control over my slice of SLife. And I found myself turning outward. Only in a metaverse can you actually make changes in all your realms.

There are so many tales of people who are somewhat less than beautiful in real life falling in love with avatars in SLife, and admitting to feeling a virtual attraction to those avatars. With the majority of avatars being aged 20-something in appearance (and only if you’ve suffered through lots of plastic surgery), beauty in Second Life is a sought after commodity. There is a huge business around it, as we all know. From modelling agencies to the best photo-real skins with a baker’s dozen of must-have make-ups. Clothes, hair, prim lashes, prim nails, photo studios, fashion blogs…

I therefore decided I needed to purchase some new skins as my bit of control measure to how I was feeling. My old skin was wonderful, but it only came with one skin. It took me a couple of months to realise that other skins came in packs with different makeup, and my peach-coloured lips bothered me. Shocked by the cost of skin packages, I took my time wondering some of the talked-about stores, trying on demos, and wondering what I might look like out in the sunshine. Have you ever noticed how dark most of those skin stores set their decor at?

Not all skins are made alike, however, and unfortunately it was only one truly expensive set – which wasn’t purchasable individually, which made me look anything other than a barbie doll with inflated lips. After mortgaging my house (quite literally – as I’ve sacrificed my next two week’s land tier fees for the sake of the purchase) I walked away with a set of skin I hope makes me outwardly ‘more beautiful’.

Who for, I sometimes ponder? But that’s something not worth losing sleep over, as I drift around second life hoping my new face-lights and pert little nose (which really doesn’t look any different from my old nose) and red lipstick say something to everybody about looking into my inner-self a little more.