The Body Farm
Demonic Hellhound
Update, 3/19/13:
I'd like to thank Gaia, honestly. Yeah I b***h a lot and yeah I bump all the pro-masculine item threads a lot, but I can also be nice and say thank you. The latest rig was pretty well balanced--a far cry from the past year or two--and we even had an EI that wasn't super kawaii desu girly girl. So thank you for being more gender balanced lately. I sincerely hope this trend continues and people realize that being gender balanced is only fair (and a smart move for a company that is for women, men, and everyone in between).
Origional Post:
I am really getting sick of this crap. It's always the same excuse, that females and men with female avatars buy more items and customize their avatars more often. Or, maybe it's because "there's not much you can do with pants, shoes, and plain shirts."
I enjoy this site, mostly for the forums even though I was initially attracted because of the avatar I could customize. And honestly? It pisses me off on a regular basis that when new rigs come out, new shop dates happen, that the majority of the items are feminine or made strictly for female or feminine avatars. It's as if you all used the unisexing of items as an excuse to almost entirely ignore a portion of your site's users purposefully. And you know what else annoys me? That I'm starting to sound like a broken record every freaking time new items come out.
As it stands, the only times you guys seem gender fair is when you release monthly collectibles. But that's once a month.
Is the problem that you do not have artists who want to make male-oriented items? Are your employees making that decision, or is it somehow proven to the company that it's more financially beneficial to make 80% of the items released female-oriented? Because if that's the case, it'll only be increasingly beneficial because of the fact that males and male-avatared females will stop coming to this site, will switch to female avatars, or will stick to the same few items they always use. And if it's NOT because it's financially beneficial and IS because your employees are making the decision, something needs to be done. A system needs to be set up so that when items are released, there is a fair way to make people with both male and female avatars happy with the number of items available to them for use.
Over the years, you guys have listened to users when they wanted items recolored (as this update proves), when they wanted ALL items unisexed (which was a huge undertaking and yet you still did it), when more armor was wanted, when more weapons were wanted, when specific anime knock-off items were requested, when leg-mods were requested, so forth and so on. Yet year after year you guys seem to take lightly the requests by both male and female users for you guys to release more male-friendly / masculine items. Why?
Please also check these threads out:
Also, check out the suit infographic I found, Gaia artists. Picture proof that suits aren't as cut-and-dry as you seem to think.
EDIT, o1/o3/13:
Throughout this thread, several people have mentioned the severe lack of good facial hair for avatars on this site.
I've also noticed a trend of users saying that they would be more willing to spend cash on the site if there were more items suited to their masculine avatar needs.
And on another note, a poster brought up a very good point:
It won't be easy, since there's a lot that can be defined as masculine or feminine depending on the different pose types or their colors or whatnot. And there are things that could be both. For example, Black Ops Gear. On the surface, you'd figure, hey, masculine item all the way! It's an obvious tribute to the Metal Gear series, what with Ninja Raiden's helmet, Snake's bandanna and eyepatch... but then there's a waaaay open shirt like the one Sniper Wolf wears.
The most blatantly restricted way to do this, without accounting for items that actually have poses that are obviously for both genders is to do a search for skirts/dress vs pants.
So that's what I did, and... here's the result.
Search result for "skirt" in the Marketplace:491 items.
Search for "dress" in the Marketplace: 675 items.
Search for "pants" in the Marketplace: 873 items.
If we combine the results of skirts and dresses, that's a total of 1166 obviously feminine items vs. 873 supposedly masculine items. It sounds like a fair balance, with a difference of just 293 items.
But take a closer look:
Flamingo Fancy Pants is actually a dress. The Bloomers set isn't exactly what I'd think of when I think pants, even though they're tagged as such. There are also lots of items like the Traveling Pants, some of the skinny jeans, Rocker Girl capris, Sweetie Delight and a ton of others that are very obviously feminine falling into that category of "pants."
So it's not an easy task in the least to compile numbers, especially when items are in the thousands. However, it's safe to say that we've gotten to the point where the imbalance is actually noticeable by a good size of the Gaian population, so that should be a good indicator that we're in dire need of more gender neutral items... and maybe tone it down a bit on the fluff and lace.
---
I'm actually looking down the "pants" list from most to least expensive and I'm finding quite a few feminine things listed in "pants" like Tink's Jealousy and... some that seem oddly placed. Like Lady Alzbeta.
Pants by definition aren't all masculine, but skirts and dresses definitely are not.
EDIT, o1/o6/13:
There has been a bit of debate in this thread about how leg mods and other things look like they were made on female bases and simply transferred over to male--or how they don't look like they were.
I am not going to quote anyone (although if you wish to read, head on over to pages 9 and 10 to see some good posts about it), but I am going to say this:
A lot of the leg mods end up making guys look like dudes who skip leg day at the gym, but on female bases they look perfectly fine. Why? Because the female avatar base looks more normal with thinner legs and tiny, tiny feet. The male base? Not so much. Let me show you what I mean:
See how much more normal the female bases look with the tiny legs and feet?
Although, Gaia has been much better recently about releasing leg mods that aren't so damn tiny, such as the Swanky Gent (it even has gent in the name! [although that didn't stop the "king" of campus from being for tiny legged creatures]) and Prince with a Wavered Heart (again, prince in the name so I'm glad it isn't foot-bindingly disfiguring!).
But on the same note of feet being made for women... A LOT of shoes released lately are heeled or make feet extremely tiny, which means unless us male avatared users want our guys to look like they had half their feet cut off, we really don't have a good amount of new shoes to choose from. And it's really, really annoying. I mean, do you honestly expect a majority of male avatared users to want their avi's feet to be a third the size they should be? Also, do me a favor and head on over to TekTek. Go to where you can create an avatar, pick a male avatar base, and go to "feet" "all colors," and count how many shoes are completely feminine compared to unisex shoes (I say unisex because women can wear almost any shoe and it still be fine; men on the other hand don't always want to wear "Band of Bremen" thigh high, high heeled boots).
I'd also like to drop another post by a user here, whom brought up a few valid points:
1. Contests and themes that are sweet based really are biased towards feminine items; how are you going to turn a cupcake into a masculine item? Not unless you make a coat, I guess?
2. REIs and EIs that phase out the dude; I'm also looking at you--AGAIN--SOF Taiga. Also, those S-Pop items? You could have added some sneakers to it instead of just high heels... To go along with the "male duet cap."
3. How come we don't have all the sports covered? Sports are generally manly and would be an easy way to say, "hey, we DO pay attention to you guys!" You guys did do some cheerleader items recently, so how come you didn't counter that with say football items?
Edit, o1/14/13:
I posted in the ATA and actually got a response ... from Lanzer! Although it seems like a cookie cutter, no actual info response, I'll take it because that means some higher ups are seeing this stuff.
I think the ratio of the demand for the different types of items, and also because at Gaia we have a talent pool that has more female artists than male ones. Inspiration comes from both requests/demands, and also what favors the specific artists, ideas often skew on one side despite that we put a lot of conscious effort to keep a balance on both sides. I hope you can still find enough items to keep your interest and we'll continue trying to maintain the balance.But at this point, there is no balance to maintain. The balance is definitely skewed towards female avatars, especially when it comes to hair, shoes, and hats. And I understand that more artists may be female, but their talents shouldn't be gender biased.
And when it comes to demand... High quality items that are more masculine tend to skyrocket into the millions on the Market Place, meaning there is a demand for high quality masculine items on this site. So maybe there is a higher demand for a lot more feminine items in general, but high quality masculine items definitely have a demand.
But thank you for answering me and I do hope artists do heed some of the new item requests being put forth to them in the feedback (there are currently three threads in there asking for masculine items, thankfully).
UPDATE, o1/22/13:
With the new gold shop update, we got some really nice pants in Global Imports. The "Nomad's Cotton Breeches" are done WELL... And I hate to be nit-picky, but come on Gaia. It's like you're being petty and TEASING us now, as if you said, "well they want pants so ******** them, give them pants in girl colors." The pants look great on the male base but what colors do you make them? Pastel colors. Light pink, light blue, and light green? Nomads in bright pink, baby blue, and mint green pants? The white and cream are ok because those are normal pant colors, but it would have been nice if we had had a regular blue, a regular brown, a darker green, black, and red to mirror the baby blue, cream color, light green, white, and pink.
I just hope we see these pants released during a recolor update, with darker more natural colors. neutral
But overall, thank you for being more gender-balanced with this gold shop update than with the last one.
I'd like to thank Gaia, honestly. Yeah I b***h a lot and yeah I bump all the pro-masculine item threads a lot, but I can also be nice and say thank you. The latest rig was pretty well balanced--a far cry from the past year or two--and we even had an EI that wasn't super kawaii desu girly girl. So thank you for being more gender balanced lately. I sincerely hope this trend continues and people realize that being gender balanced is only fair (and a smart move for a company that is for women, men, and everyone in between).
Origional Post:
I am really getting sick of this crap. It's always the same excuse, that females and men with female avatars buy more items and customize their avatars more often. Or, maybe it's because "there's not much you can do with pants, shoes, and plain shirts."
I enjoy this site, mostly for the forums even though I was initially attracted because of the avatar I could customize. And honestly? It pisses me off on a regular basis that when new rigs come out, new shop dates happen, that the majority of the items are feminine or made strictly for female or feminine avatars. It's as if you all used the unisexing of items as an excuse to almost entirely ignore a portion of your site's users purposefully. And you know what else annoys me? That I'm starting to sound like a broken record every freaking time new items come out.
As it stands, the only times you guys seem gender fair is when you release monthly collectibles. But that's once a month.
Is the problem that you do not have artists who want to make male-oriented items? Are your employees making that decision, or is it somehow proven to the company that it's more financially beneficial to make 80% of the items released female-oriented? Because if that's the case, it'll only be increasingly beneficial because of the fact that males and male-avatared females will stop coming to this site, will switch to female avatars, or will stick to the same few items they always use. And if it's NOT because it's financially beneficial and IS because your employees are making the decision, something needs to be done. A system needs to be set up so that when items are released, there is a fair way to make people with both male and female avatars happy with the number of items available to them for use.
Over the years, you guys have listened to users when they wanted items recolored (as this update proves), when they wanted ALL items unisexed (which was a huge undertaking and yet you still did it), when more armor was wanted, when more weapons were wanted, when specific anime knock-off items were requested, when leg-mods were requested, so forth and so on. Yet year after year you guys seem to take lightly the requests by both male and female users for you guys to release more male-friendly / masculine items. Why?
Please also check these threads out:
- Masculine vs. Feminine: REI Style < I recommend looking at this thread because it is new / active and uses a comprehensive rating system, easy for anyone to view at a glance and see the huge number difference between masculine and feminine items.
From 2012: Male Wig Diversity & Quantity
From 2011: Over 90% so far agree - WE NEED MASCULINE ITEMS, ALREADY
From 2010: Masculine Items - We want them, and you CAN make them.
Also, check out the suit infographic I found, Gaia artists. Picture proof that suits aren't as cut-and-dry as you seem to think.
EDIT, o1/o3/13:
Throughout this thread, several people have mentioned the severe lack of good facial hair for avatars on this site.
I've also noticed a trend of users saying that they would be more willing to spend cash on the site if there were more items suited to their masculine avatar needs.
And on another note, a poster brought up a very good point:
Bleeding Apocalypse
---
Not sure if I posted here, but I'd honestly like to see a complied list of how many male and female items we have on the site. You know, to see exactly how many each side of the gender scale really has.
It won't be easy, since there's a lot that can be defined as masculine or feminine depending on the different pose types or their colors or whatnot. And there are things that could be both. For example, Black Ops Gear. On the surface, you'd figure, hey, masculine item all the way! It's an obvious tribute to the Metal Gear series, what with Ninja Raiden's helmet, Snake's bandanna and eyepatch... but then there's a waaaay open shirt like the one Sniper Wolf wears.
The most blatantly restricted way to do this, without accounting for items that actually have poses that are obviously for both genders is to do a search for skirts/dress vs pants.
So that's what I did, and... here's the result.
Search result for "skirt" in the Marketplace:491 items.
Search for "dress" in the Marketplace: 675 items.
Search for "pants" in the Marketplace: 873 items.
If we combine the results of skirts and dresses, that's a total of 1166 obviously feminine items vs. 873 supposedly masculine items. It sounds like a fair balance, with a difference of just 293 items.
But take a closer look:
Flamingo Fancy Pants is actually a dress. The Bloomers set isn't exactly what I'd think of when I think pants, even though they're tagged as such. There are also lots of items like the Traveling Pants, some of the skinny jeans, Rocker Girl capris, Sweetie Delight and a ton of others that are very obviously feminine falling into that category of "pants."
So it's not an easy task in the least to compile numbers, especially when items are in the thousands. However, it's safe to say that we've gotten to the point where the imbalance is actually noticeable by a good size of the Gaian population, so that should be a good indicator that we're in dire need of more gender neutral items... and maybe tone it down a bit on the fluff and lace.
---
I'm actually looking down the "pants" list from most to least expensive and I'm finding quite a few feminine things listed in "pants" like Tink's Jealousy and... some that seem oddly placed. Like Lady Alzbeta.
Pants by definition aren't all masculine, but skirts and dresses definitely are not.
EDIT, o1/o6/13:
There has been a bit of debate in this thread about how leg mods and other things look like they were made on female bases and simply transferred over to male--or how they don't look like they were.
I am not going to quote anyone (although if you wish to read, head on over to pages 9 and 10 to see some good posts about it), but I am going to say this:
A lot of the leg mods end up making guys look like dudes who skip leg day at the gym, but on female bases they look perfectly fine. Why? Because the female avatar base looks more normal with thinner legs and tiny, tiny feet. The male base? Not so much. Let me show you what I mean:
See how much more normal the female bases look with the tiny legs and feet?
Although, Gaia has been much better recently about releasing leg mods that aren't so damn tiny, such as the Swanky Gent (it even has gent in the name! [although that didn't stop the "king" of campus from being for tiny legged creatures]) and Prince with a Wavered Heart (again, prince in the name so I'm glad it isn't foot-bindingly disfiguring!).
But on the same note of feet being made for women... A LOT of shoes released lately are heeled or make feet extremely tiny, which means unless us male avatared users want our guys to look like they had half their feet cut off, we really don't have a good amount of new shoes to choose from. And it's really, really annoying. I mean, do you honestly expect a majority of male avatared users to want their avi's feet to be a third the size they should be? Also, do me a favor and head on over to TekTek. Go to where you can create an avatar, pick a male avatar base, and go to "feet" "all colors," and count how many shoes are completely feminine compared to unisex shoes (I say unisex because women can wear almost any shoe and it still be fine; men on the other hand don't always want to wear "Band of Bremen" thigh high, high heeled boots).
I'd also like to drop another post by a user here, whom brought up a few valid points:
Catalyste
You know what really doesn't help?
When Gaia tries to throw themes around.....like the latest Cross-Stitch contest. neutral
It's based on sweets....so guess what you're going to run into 98% of the time?
Female entries.
And I know these are users submitting these, but they've gotten into a "Gaian" mentality that "boys don't count. Girls love cute."
Seriously.
I have another bone to pick with Gaia too. It's about their imbalance of character-based items in their REIs. I've noticed that with Polar Tear, they basically edged out the male character in favor of the female character. It was the same with Wisteria as well.
Oh, and another thing...Gaia should stop giving men Gentlemen clothes or dainty boy stuff. We don't even have all the basic sports covered yet...heck where are the balls for those? There's another thread asking for some boxing gear. How could Gaia have missed Boxing!?!
When Gaia tries to throw themes around.....like the latest Cross-Stitch contest. neutral
It's based on sweets....so guess what you're going to run into 98% of the time?
Female entries.
And I know these are users submitting these, but they've gotten into a "Gaian" mentality that "boys don't count. Girls love cute."
Seriously.
I have another bone to pick with Gaia too. It's about their imbalance of character-based items in their REIs. I've noticed that with Polar Tear, they basically edged out the male character in favor of the female character. It was the same with Wisteria as well.
Oh, and another thing...Gaia should stop giving men Gentlemen clothes or dainty boy stuff. We don't even have all the basic sports covered yet...heck where are the balls for those? There's another thread asking for some boxing gear. How could Gaia have missed Boxing!?!
1. Contests and themes that are sweet based really are biased towards feminine items; how are you going to turn a cupcake into a masculine item? Not unless you make a coat, I guess?
2. REIs and EIs that phase out the dude; I'm also looking at you--AGAIN--SOF Taiga. Also, those S-Pop items? You could have added some sneakers to it instead of just high heels... To go along with the "male duet cap."
3. How come we don't have all the sports covered? Sports are generally manly and would be an easy way to say, "hey, we DO pay attention to you guys!" You guys did do some cheerleader items recently, so how come you didn't counter that with say football items?
Edit, o1/14/13:
I posted in the ATA and actually got a response ... from Lanzer! Although it seems like a cookie cutter, no actual info response, I'll take it because that means some higher ups are seeing this stuff.
The Body Farm
lanzer
The Body Farm
Hello.
I've brought the issue up in the Site Feedback, but by the request of a few of my thread's patrons, I'm here to ask directly and hopefully get an answer...
How come the majority of items--especially good quality items--are aimed towards the female population of Gaia?
If possible, I'd like to know if it's because the majority of the buying population is female (and if so, was that the case before item releases began favoring females?) or if it is because there is no oversight to what items the artists do or do not make and they get to choose the items.
It is becoming more and more obvious every item release that the number difference between masculine items and feminine items is pretty vast (especially when you look at the shoes released). The current rig actually has a greater amount of male items than usual, but one rig release isn't much of a trend towards gender equality in item releases.
Is there any chance that in the future, there would be a system set up where the number of items made would have to be fair and balanced when it comes to gender? Say, if six female items are made, six male items would have to be made? Or is there definite evidence that us users with male or masculine avatars are not worth it to make items for?
I've brought the issue up in the Site Feedback, but by the request of a few of my thread's patrons, I'm here to ask directly and hopefully get an answer...
How come the majority of items--especially good quality items--are aimed towards the female population of Gaia?
If possible, I'd like to know if it's because the majority of the buying population is female (and if so, was that the case before item releases began favoring females?) or if it is because there is no oversight to what items the artists do or do not make and they get to choose the items.
It is becoming more and more obvious every item release that the number difference between masculine items and feminine items is pretty vast (especially when you look at the shoes released). The current rig actually has a greater amount of male items than usual, but one rig release isn't much of a trend towards gender equality in item releases.
Is there any chance that in the future, there would be a system set up where the number of items made would have to be fair and balanced when it comes to gender? Say, if six female items are made, six male items would have to be made? Or is there definite evidence that us users with male or masculine avatars are not worth it to make items for?
I think the ratio of the demand for the different types of items, and also because at Gaia we have a talent pool that has more female artists than male ones. Inspiration comes from both requests/demands, and also what favors the specific artists, ideas often skew on one side despite that we put a lot of conscious effort to keep a balance on both sides. I hope you can still find enough items to keep your interest and we'll continue trying to maintain the balance.
And when it comes to demand... High quality items that are more masculine tend to skyrocket into the millions on the Market Place, meaning there is a demand for high quality masculine items on this site. So maybe there is a higher demand for a lot more feminine items in general, but high quality masculine items definitely have a demand.
But thank you for answering me and I do hope artists do heed some of the new item requests being put forth to them in the feedback (there are currently three threads in there asking for masculine items, thankfully).
UPDATE, o1/22/13:
With the new gold shop update, we got some really nice pants in Global Imports. The "Nomad's Cotton Breeches" are done WELL... And I hate to be nit-picky, but come on Gaia. It's like you're being petty and TEASING us now, as if you said, "well they want pants so ******** them, give them pants in girl colors." The pants look great on the male base but what colors do you make them? Pastel colors. Light pink, light blue, and light green? Nomads in bright pink, baby blue, and mint green pants? The white and cream are ok because those are normal pant colors, but it would have been nice if we had had a regular blue, a regular brown, a darker green, black, and red to mirror the baby blue, cream color, light green, white, and pink.
I just hope we see these pants released during a recolor update, with darker more natural colors. neutral
But overall, thank you for being more gender-balanced with this gold shop update than with the last one.
