Who would have thunk that a fashion topic, of all things, would drag me back to blogging? Yet here it is.
A few days ago, I chatted with a good lady friend who expressed some puzzlement about a newish trend in SL fashion that has become popular in the last year or so. “What’s up with this whole ‘sexy breast thing’?” she said. “It’s like uni-breast. Women are meant to have cleavage, not stuffed peppers!”
I wasn’t quite sure at first what she meant, so when I asked, she replied she was talking about “the skins that have the breasts all pushed tight together. No valley between the mounds!” And she added that she didn’t find that very sexy. She meant those wearables commonly called “cleavage enhancers” of course.
In case you haven’t heard about these things – a cleavage enhancer in SL is a texture typically worn on the undershirt layer which covers the area between the breasts and makes it look as if the breasts are pressed against each other.
I hadn’t really thought about it at the time, so I could only reply vaguely that I do find it sexy sometimes and sometimes not, probably depending on the type of clothing the person wears.
So what do you think? Are cleavage enhancers sexy or not? Opinions on this topic seem to be split in two, if you’ll excuse the pun. After thinking a little more about it, I find myself still sitting firmly on the fence.
One thing that strikes me is that skin designers like Laqroki for example have chosen to offer cleavage enhancers as a separate wearable, but generally do not integrate the “enhanced” shading into their skins themselves, although technically it should be no problem. Why not? My guess is that skin designers (hopefully) know enough about human anatomy to know that female breasts do not look like that by nature. They also seem to have decided that it’s not necessarily desirable at all times for them to look like that.
I’m sticking with my first notion that the difference is made by the type of clothing the person is wearing. You get a clue when you look up the etymology of “enhance” and find out that the original meaning of the word is “lift up” or “raise”. This is quite fitting, because the “enhanced” look is what a woman’s breasts look like when she’s wearing a push-up bra, a corsage or a very tight top.
The main conclusion that a lady of style should draw from this, in my opinion, is that she’s better off without a cleavage enhancer when she’s wearing a loose-fitting top or anything that she wouldn’t combine with a push-up bra in real life.
This is especially evident with very low-cut tops that make it unmistakably obvious that she’s not wearing any bra at all. Combining such a top with a cleavage enhancer will not only put her look firmly into the “Impossible in RL” category, but also give her a distinct flavour of trying too hard. It will no doubt generate some male attention, but not necessarily the type of attention she really wants (nor from the type of male she really likes). For me, it just doesn’t work.
On the other hand, I have to admit I find that with a top that makes it believable, a cleavage enhancer can add some delicious spice to a lady’s neckline.
So, in a nutshell, if you want the guys to stare at your breasts unblinkingly as if they were hypnotized, by all means wear a cleavage enhancer at all times. But if it’s more the passing glance you’re after, maybe lingering appreciatively for a second or two, but then moving on to take an interest in the rest of you, use some discernment.
I totally agree Dylan…..although I find it quite amusing that it is a man blogging on such a thing hehehe but I know you and when something catches your eye (:-) you will write about it. I am lucky that in my skin from “ys&ys (yourskin & yourshape” has the enhancement seperate but on all of the makeup so I can either, just by changing my skin, have lovely cleavage boobs or have the pushed together, like two melons boobs hehe….but well done on noticing and bringing it to our attention and now every other male who reads blogs lol hugggs xx
Agreed on all points. The only time i think the ‘uni-boob’ is acceptable is when wearing something that would naturally push them together (like a corset) unfortunately some skin makers dont give the option of enhanced cleavage or normal. All you can do is either wear a high necked top, or offer yourself up as pillow to weary noobs (boobs for noobs!!! i may be onto something here…)
why am I not surprised you came back to blog about breasts?
ok..guilty one…I just slap on a skin and go with it. I generally forget to look at the chest and worry more about the face. Unless Tats’ are involved but then it’s back tat’s so I’m still missing the whole breast portion of the body.
I do solemnly swear to try harder and check if my breast in enhanced or not lest some wayward young buck is foolish enough too take that as a invitation to dive in. (we shall bless this person now…we all know that won’t end well. for him.)
No offense intended, but what your friend is probably not getting 100% right is the way these cleavage enhancers are intended to be applied. I am not saying that everyone uses them this way, but the intention is:
to better simulate (well … “exaggerate” in some cases) the look which a nice cleavage has in 1st life in different situations.
In 1st Life, this look is affected my many different factors. One of them is the natural shape of your breast (and they do come in MANY different shapes
but, as we run around without any kind of clothing only very rarely these days, clothing is a very important factor. You don’t need a real (boned) corset or a push-up bra to change the look of your cleavage. Every woman knows this. A perfectly normal bra does that, too; especially those with underwired and molded cups. Tight tops do that, too. They can push up, push together or push apart.
It is quite impossible to use the normal shape sliders to create a realistically looking cleavage if you take these factors into consideration. Additionally, the avatar mesh, the polygonal grid which defines our shape in SL, is woefully inadequate, when it comes to realistically simulating a woman’s chest. Only a very low number of triangles is available for an avatar’s chest. Enough probably to reproduce the male shape, but any female breast which is larger than a B cup looks kind of awkward on an SL avatar. Cleavage enhancers and good skins use subtle shading tricks to make the female breast look more soft, more rounder, than it actually can be in SL.
And to reproduce the effect of clothing (underwear and tight tops) different cleavage enhancers can be applied. LAQ, for example, now offers 4 different variants of cleavage enhancers for each skin tone. Some of them even have a minimizing effect, making the breasts appearing smaller than the original skin would look like without any additions. Most skins are optimized for avatars with a bra size of B or C. Flat chested women look kind of funny with such a skin. The latest cleavage enhancers can fix that especially when the chest is naked. On the other hand, the “push-up” enhancers should never be worn without clothing because they simulate the look of female breasts, when they are pushed up / squeezed together by clothing.
This just goes to show, that … nothing is as simple as it might appear on first look. Prejudices – even those with a true core – rarely help in understanding the complexities of the world.
Creative designers have come up with solutions to make our avatars look much better and much more realistic than the base technology of SL allows. If you don’t believe that, just check out the avatars in Blue Mars for example. The base technology of Blue Mars is way better than SL’s. Yet, their avatars look like a poor newbie in SL. The reason is simple: The SL designers have much more experience with creating clothes and skins which overcome technical limitations of the system. Cleavage enhancers are just a fairly new example for this principle.
That said … I admit, that in the oversexed world, that SL is in some locations, realism is not really the final goal when creating your avatar or when using cleavage enhancers. But who am I to judge. I just wanted to emphasize the fact, that “cleavage enhancers” CAN be used to create a more realistic cleavage, not necessarily a more spectacular one.
Thanks for this great comment, Deirdre!
I don’t think we differ at all really – though of course, me being a guy, you’re knowledge and expertise on the subject is much superior to mine! 