by Kassadee Marie, HSM team writer

I’ve had a lot of conversations about ladies’ (and occasionally guys’) clothes in Home. Many of these conversations were fashion-based, but some were about what the developers were offering and if they should be offering it. Yes, I’m talking about those clothes: the outfits that make the female (and rarely the male) avatars of Home look like sleazy tramps.

Yes, I know these items sell, but should they be sold in a PG-13 environment?

Ask anyone, and whether their answer is yes or no, they’ll probably have their own list of reasons for answering that way. Speaking frankly and only for myself, I not only find it inappropriate, I find that I can’t think very highly of people who dress their avatars this way or the developers that make clothing of this type to sell to them.

I’m not going to make a list of these items sold on Home – for one thing, there are those who would use this as a shopping list – but if you’re wondering, my personal rating scale for clothing goes something like this:

• Conservative
• Nice/Attractive
• Sexy/Sensual
• Not for the Shy
• OMG! That’s gross; what were they thinking?

So, I’m talking about clothes that fall into that last group. You can probably picture some clothing on Home that falls into this category in your mind, also. Less clothing does not always mean more appeal. There’s a point at which less just becomes less.

Who do I think are wearing clothes of this seamy type? For one, some guys wear “sexy” female clothing to troll others. They find it funny to have young straight boys pay them a lot of attention, and then at some point let them know they’ve been flirting with a guy. This can result in someone leaving Home forever; a person that decides all females on Home are fakes and is going to say so, loudly and often; or the “birth” of a new troll seeking some form of satisfaction by taking revenge on others. Then there are the guys who say they wear clothes like this because that’s what they enjoy looking at on the avatar on their screens. This is one concept I don’t understand because the avatars on Home are supposed to stand for the person controlling them. After all, when a person types, it’s their avatar that speaks their words and therefore represents them, in effect.

I think a lot of young females wear clothing in this style, also. This bothers me more than when guys wear the same clothes. It’s bad enough when males treat us females as objects; why do females have to treat themselves that way? Why haven’t they learned self respect? Yes, we all like to feel appealing to the gender that we wish to attract, but there’s no need for flagrant displays. This is another concept that I don’t understand; in addition to the self-respect issue, females don’t need to dress this way to get attention in Home. And it’s usually not the kind of attention most people would want, anyway. We’ve probably all seen and heard some female trying to get males to back away from her scantily-dressed avatar. A long time ago in Central Plaza (when there weren’t as many outfits of this type) I saw a female asking some guy why he wouldn’t leave her alone, and I couldn’t resist saying, “Because you’re dressed like that.”

Do I think it’s right that guys bother females dressed like this? No, but I think it’s inevitable.

There seem to be two main responses given to the people who object to some of the items (particularly female clothing) sold or occasionally given away on Home.

The first response is worded something like, “Well, everyone (Sony and the third party developers) makes content like this.” I have to ask: when did “He/she/they did it first” become an acceptable reason for bad behavior? That sounds like a child’s reasoning to me, not something you would expect to hear from an adult. I feel like I’m channeling my mother asking this, but if everyone was jumping off a cliff, would you jump too?

(By the way, anyone who has studied logic knows that “everyone’s doing it” is actually a logical fallacy called bandwagon. Popularity has no bearing on validity because, yes, the majority can be wrong. The Earth really isn’t flat.)

The second and somewhat related response sounds something like, “Children are exposed to things like this all of the time on television, in movies, etc.” Again, I have to ask: how does that make it acceptable? If the majority of people around you were stealing, would that make it alright for you to steal?

We need to quit making excuses and allowances, and stand up for something, Standing up for freedom does not mean standing up for “anything goes”. That’s anarchy, not freedom.

An interesting discussion usually follows when someone objects to an item made for sale that crosses the line for them personally. You can see examples of this on the Sony forum quite often. There are those who say the item is “just funny” and those who say it’s a matter of personal opinion. I agree that what items a person chooses to buy and wear, on Home or in the real world for that matter, is a personal decision. However, I think what is sold on Home should be a matter for Sony to decide based on a general consensus. What the average person would find unacceptable is where the line should be drawn.

So, this begs the question, how would Sony determine what the average person finds acceptable? Well, I suggest those people who make the decisions, look around at the real every day world or movies, televisions shows, and magazines. Will they find over-the-top items there sometimes? Yes, but when people are dressed like this they are usually represented as not-upstanding citizens. Or, in other words, not the type of people Sony should want on Home.

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