You should read Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin. It's a non-fiction account from the 1960s of a white Texan journalist who has medical treatment to make himself look black (convincingly enough to 'pass') and then travels through racially-segregated bits of America. (The Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me) about the book tells you a bit about how they did the skin-colour change, but the book's definitely worth reading for its own sake!) Definitely not a convenient thing to do, though.
In Second Life you can be any skin colour you want (white! black! blue! green!), but I felt that it would somehow be 'wrong' to pretend to be a different 'real' skin-colour -- that 'playing' at it for fun, just for the look of it, would be trivialising it in some way. Which is, on reflection, a bit weird, because a) I wouldn't have seen anything odd or wrong about pretending to be male or to have wings or whatever, and b) I don't think skin-colour should have to be an identity, and c) I am now extremely confused about what my subconscious is thinking, and will have to go away and poke it with sticks.
I felt that it would somehow be 'wrong' to pretend to be a different 'real' skin-colour
I did idly wonder whether feelings like this might have helped discourage people from putting any serious R&D effort into developing convenient methods of skin-dyeing, on the basis that they reckoned changing between black and white would be too much of a Politically Charged Statement and so there wouldn't be enough market for it.
(Not that that ought to stop anyone turning their skin blue, on the other hand, if that were conveniently available. And it would confuse the hell out of racists, who wouldn't be able to work out whether they should be looking down on you or not. Though I suppose they'd probably play it safe and do so anyway.)
I did idly wonder whether feelings like this might have helped discourage people from putting any serious R&D effort into developing convenient methods of skin-dyeing
Well, perhaps not in the UK. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-9tcXpW1DE)
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You should read Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin. It's a non-fiction account from the 1960s of a white Texan journalist who has medical treatment to make himself look black (convincingly enough to 'pass') and then travels through racially-segregated bits of America. (The Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me) about the book tells you a bit about how they did the skin-colour change, but the book's definitely worth reading for its own sake!) Definitely not a convenient thing to do, though.
In Second Life you can be any skin colour you want (white! black! blue! green!), but I felt that it would somehow be 'wrong' to pretend to be a different 'real' skin-colour -- that 'playing' at it for fun, just for the look of it, would be trivialising it in some way. Which is, on reflection, a bit weird, because a) I wouldn't have seen anything odd or wrong about pretending to be male or to have wings or whatever, and b) I don't think skin-colour should have to be an identity, and c) I am now extremely confused about what my subconscious is thinking, and will have to go away and poke it with sticks.
I did idly wonder whether feelings like this might have helped discourage people from putting any serious R&D effort into developing convenient methods of skin-dyeing, on the basis that they reckoned changing between black and white would be too much of a Politically Charged Statement and so there wouldn't be enough market for it.
(Not that that ought to stop anyone turning their skin blue, on the other hand, if that were conveniently available. And it would confuse the hell out of racists, who wouldn't be able to work out whether they should be looking down on you or not. Though I suppose they'd probably play it safe and do so anyway.)
Well, perhaps not in the UK. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-9tcXpW1DE)