Women have been dyeing their hair for a very long time, and for almost all of that time it was key to maintain the illusion that it was your natural colour. Touching up the natural roots as they grew out was crucial, because admitting to being a bottle-blond was a styling sin. Yet in Second Life, it's impossible to miss the trend of showing roots in avatar hair textures, which has picked up a lot in the past couple years. Now many of the most popular brands prominently feature rooted styles. Although some people don't get it , I think this trend makes perfect sense. Here's why:

It's almost too easy to be flawless in Second Life. You never need to tweeze your brows, fix your makeup, or do any of the other little tedious things that are required in reality. The airbrushed flawlessness we see everywhere is unattainable to most of us in reality, while it only costs a couple dollars and a hour or two of time in SL. This is great, until you realize that the reason we value this "perfect" look is precisely because it's so rare and hard to obtain. In the past this appreciation for rare and hard to obtain features fueled to popularity of things like ultra-pale skin, corsets, tiny feet, etc. When these things become easily obtainable, the ideal swings in the opposite direction, so when flawless beauty is effortless the imperfect look becomes the real challenge.

More than that, it injects a kind of realism and authenticity into our plastic-fantastic world that it's lacking otherwise. This trend isn't unique to Second Life of course, and the new wave of RL fashionistas scattered all over Tumblr and Pinterest are crazy about roots and grown-out dye jobs for this reason. Although a lot of the same old beauty standards remain, the popularization of previously unacceptable features like hair roots, full eyebrows, glasses, freckles, moles, and even short nails are all (in my opinion) a way to inject authenticity into a world that had started looking a little too fake.

Iris Ophelia (Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

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