Surf’s Up!

With all the excitement of the SL Clothing Fair, it would have been easy to forget my normal routine, which involves ritual humiliation on the runway on Monday nights.

Tonight’s contest was one of those extremely frustrating moving targets. It started life as, “Styling Daring Bikini.” Which is an interesting idea for a guy, since a bikini is, by definition, a two piece swim suit. At some point in the last week it became “Styling Daring Bikini/Boxers” and later this afternoon it finally settled on “Styling Daring Bikini/Boxers/Swimwear Theme.” With that kind of moving target, there was no way I had any chance of competing with the band-aid and dental floss set.

I took my daring in another direction – rather than showing skin, I went for sexy daring-do.

This was pretty much fun. I looked at a lot of fashion blogs — especially the Surfer Throwdown over on Men’s Second Style — and got some great tips on the surf look. The Boho sandals from Shiny Things, in particular, were one of those great items. When I saw the detail work in them, I had to have them. It blew my budget but what are budgets for? These will work with a variety of outfits and I’m very pleased with them. The Tropical Boardies from Reaction are awesome and the jewelry from MRM was just the right touch.

The hair is the same hair from my Blind Blueberry Zeppelin outfit, Rei from Discord. This time I tinted it blond. The glasses are my Crowe frames from primOptic. I love thoe things. The skin was a shock. It’s a free group gift from Belleza and I always thought it was too pale, until I was looking for a skin for a blond and this one fit better than any I found. It was a bit pale for a surfer, but it had the right feel to it. I used my normal square chinned Roland shape here because the Beckham has just too weak a chin. The tats were another of those pointers I got from the fashion bloggers — the Hades set from Prozak. I may have to wear these more often. I kinda like ’em. Oh, the open shirt, that was a freebie from Lapointe. I loved the way it went with everything –picking up the textures of the shorts and tatts.

The board I made. I only needed one I could carry but I wanted more than just a flattened cylinder, too. That was a fun build.

And, as expected I got my 2 votes. The band-aid and dental floss brigade won the day. This was a loser for me, but I knew it going in. I had a thong. I coulda been cheesy and worn it, but there’s no daring in that, no style, no story. It’ll be a few days before I can compete again, so I’ll have a chance to think about it.

What would I do differently?

If I weren’t so cheap, I might have dropped a couple thou on a darker tan skin.

I really wanted one of those bandana headbands. I didn’t think of it until it was too late.

Left the shirt off. That Belleza skin has pretty good definition for being as light as it is. I coulda been that daring.

In honesty, there wasn’t anyway I coulda placed tonight, so I probably shoulda just gone out in my Relay for Life Parachute Trunks and called it good.

Stuff
Shirt: Mens “Night Emboss” Grey shirt (Short sleeve) from Lapointe.
Shorts: Tropical Boardies by Reaction
Sandals: Boho from men from Shiny Things
Necklace: Sharktooth from MRM
Ankle and Wrist: White Shell bracelet – a freebie from MRM.
Glasses: Crowe from primOptic

Hair: Rei – Discord
Skin: Belleza mans’ group Gift
Shape: my own.

PS
This picture contest I’m participating in developed a new wrinkle tonight. The organizers announced a new opportunity to get votes by participation in events.

But there’s a catch.

You have to place in one of these contest events and for every time you get 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, you can participate in a monthly fashion show and show off the winning outfits. On the face of it, it seems like a good deal because for every outfit you get on the runway at this monthly show, the organizers will throw in 500 votes and 50L.

The problem — at least for me — is that the same five or six people always win. They’re darn good! They deserve to win.

But the math is daunting. The organization puts up about 15 of these contests a month. That’s 45 award winners who could, theoretically, take their 45 outfits onto the runway. One woman in particular places in almost every competition and she is very, very good. Usually she places first. It’s not too much of a stretch to project that she’ll win at least 10 places out of the 45 – which will give her an extra 5000L and 500 votes every month of the pageant. Take the remaining 35 places and spread them across the 5 most likely winners and assume they’ll each place at least five out of the 15 times. That’s an extra 2500L and 250 votes for them. Leaving 10 opportunities for the remaining 10 regulars to vie for.

So, the simple pay-to-play vote contest – with a little side action on the stage – just got much more complicated. Strategically, these side contests were noise. They had no bearing on getting into the top 10 for the shot at the 100,000L. That changed with this rule change and made it that much more difficult for me to stay the course. Participation in the contests is no longer about the two votes and having fun.

Of course, the other side of this is that the contests are, inherently, unfair and always have been. The top ten slots have nothing to do with fashion or style. They’ll go to those who are willing to pay for them and the rest of it is just negotiation over who’ll pay how much. This just makes those final slots a bit more expensive.

Interesting wrinkle.