This wasn't a wcif thread, I thought it was just chat.

Why? Do you think older people have trouble finding work? I would have thought it was the other way round but maybe that's too much of a generalisation.

Hmm what is 40-50's clothing? I wear jeans and a nice t shirt most of the time unless I'm just at home and right now it's track pants and a sweatshirt top. (It’is winter over here and I am smack bang in the middle of that age group) I also have lots of things like that in game, as well as nice dresses and skirts from this site and people's LJ's/Dream Widths and a multitude of great cc theme threads on GOS. Where are you looking for your cc at at?

I've seen a lot on the news, in newspapers etc. about older people who have been made redundant and have been unable to find new jobs for various reasons, such as employers believing they lack technological skills that younger candidates might have simply because they're older. Given the choice between a 25 year old and a 45 year old a lot of employers would apparently choose the younger candidate. In the UK 60% of 25 year olds who lost their job would be back at work within a year compared to just 40% of 50 years olds.

Back on topic, I would have liked a life stage between child and teen too. Not necessarily a long lifestage, maybe four or five days which could have been taken off the teen life stage. I always imagine the child life stage to equate to elementary school age and the teen life stage to high school. A 'pre-teen' one could have been the equivalent to junior high/middle school age, maybe 12-14. Still, I agree with what some others have said here; it's not so hard to dress teens to look younger or older depending on what you want.

In many cases, yes. Employers would rather hire a recent college grad, train them, and pay far less than the salary an older worker with years of experience doing the same thing would command.

Thanks to everyone who posted links to salt-and-pepper hairs and things. I particularly like the facial hair with touches of grey!

I would like to apologise for my other comment. Although, I don't think you were trying to sound like a pervert, I still misunderstood what you were asking for. I hope you will forgive my ignorance.

After reading everyone's comments and considering that the original sims didn't have teens or elders at all, I am thankful to have them as they are in the sims 2. Many of you have some good ideas that will help me to make my sims ages more realistic. Like some of you have mentioned, I already dress my younger teens more child-like. I only let the girls wear very subtle makeup or none at all until they get older. I also don't let the younger teens drive.

The only problem I can see for dressing teens as younger in the first days of the stage is for people who like to take birthday pictures or film their kids growing up. Who knows what the teens will wind up in? Other than that, it seems a pretty good system.

I don't understand why you're getting so angry Simonut.

With all due respect, many 13-year-old girls ARE curvy yet are still considered children. It's not a case of sexualizing children but simply a statement of fact. As I said in my post, I was wearing a B-cup bra and had hips, a perfect little hourglass figure, by the time I was 10. I certainly didn't ACT mature, but my body was, indeed, fully mature. And I know I'm not the only girl who developed early. If the OP had been asking for curvy 6-year olds, that's one thing. Curvy 13-year-olds are entirely another matter.

And 13 isn't really that early to develop curves. My daughter was born prematurely and so she's always lagged behind a bit in terms of physical development. She just turned 15, but she's got fledgling curves now. And she's a year or two behind most of her peers in terms of physical development. In fact, she's sort of got the opposite problem than the one we're talking about. Instead of early growing up, she's been frustrated by people treating her like a much younger kid because she looks younger than she is. Our household all went out for dinner for her 15th birthday...and she was given a children's menu, meant for kids under 12. She understands why it happens, but it still pisses her off that it happens.

Of course, I'm speaking of physical maturity here, not emotional/psychological maturity, which are sometimes (but not always!) two entirely different things. Basically, our species's "early" sexual development compared to when kids are expected to act like grown-ups is a result of the fact that, as a species, we have artificially extended childhood and the length of time we allow kids for "growing up" and acting like kids in order to make the length of childhood align with the artificially extended lifespan we've created via technology, medical technology in particular. In fact, the entire concept of "teenhood," a long and gentle transition between childhood and adulthood, is pretty much a modern invention, meant to lengthen the amount of time available to educate young people in a more technologically-oriented society. Not very long ago at all, 14 was considered the age of majority. In some places, it's still the age of consent.

Given all that, I didn't take the OP's original post as "perverted" at all, but simply as a request for more of a realistic transition in terms of body shape between childhood and teenhood. Nothing to get all riled up about.

Actually, to me, it reads like you misunderstood, Simonut. The original post and post 32 are basically the same. One just had more clarification.

I am definately not trying to sexualize children. All I'm saying is that Maxis could have added a new age group to the game and showed the development of a child physically, more realistically. This is something that happens in real life in case you hadn't noticed. And I'm terribly sorry about your student and I can only imagine what she is going through, but I don't see how this thread could be inspired from or encourage child abuse.

EDIT: And yes, there are bad people out there who exploit childrens' innocence but, being a seventeen-year-old girl, I am not one of them. So please don't accuse me of being one!

I did NOT interpret your post to mean that you want 10-year-old girls who look like a Playboy model, Ella. I understood it to mean that you wanted girls and boys in the very earliest stages of puberty. Not quite a child; not quite a woman or man.

However, we now live in such a sensitive time that people are concerned that portraying children in that stage, even as pixel dollies, would be fodder for pedophiles playing the game. Never mind that from what I read, supposedly, there are ways to do that already. Someone once actually posted a couple of pictures from a site of these child-woman Sims on another site. They looked like those heavily-made-up, sexily-dressed girls you read about concerning certain beauty pageants ... only much worse. Much, much worse. Enough people complained to the site's host after that to remove the site ... but I'm sure there are other more sleazy, secret ones.

How terrible that we live in such an age. How grotesque that people associate a developing innocent young lady or gentleman in such a sexual light. I believe that your comment was in no way meant to be interpreted that way.

What type of world do we live in where I recently saw people object to Sims 2 children in underpants without undershirts? Back when I was a child (in ancient times), the only time I wore an undershirt was under a thin shirt or during the winter, to keep warm!

On a related topic, I do believe there is an Italian site that has tried to portray tweens, but they might have been forced to remove the downloads because of the furor. I suppose portraying tweens may be very difficult, indeed.

Maybe it's my experience then - my impression, at least in my line of work, is completely the opposite.

I don't know about most people but this entire thread is seriously creeping me out, oh let's just have three pages of text dedicated to casually discussing the bodies and shapes of 10 year old kids! Lol

I also disagree that Maxis needs to implement an age group for the "in between" stages of adolescence and puberty. It's not like one of those fundamental things that are missing from the game like learning to walk or stressing out over work etc.

Society today is too easily offended. It's like on Tumblr, I saw a headline: "Celebrities: They carry baskets at the supermarket JUST LIKE US!"

*headdesks*

And then three posts down there was somebody getting offended over the people laughing at this headline.

I think we all agree that child abuse, be it physical or sexual, is reprehensible, and I doubt that anyone has forgotten that. My best friends are foster parents, known in the area for their ability to deal with and turn around the "tough cases." Many of those cases are child abuse victims. Their two daughters, whom they adopted, are sisters who were physically and sexually abused by both of their parents. The older one was old enough to remember what happened to her, and she will tell you horror stories because she's healed enough, after almost 10 years with her new parents, that she CAN talk about it.

But that doesn't change the fact that girls, in particular often physically mature well before they emotionally/psychologically mature. That some people take advantage of this fact of life in order to do harm really has no bearing on whether or not one would like this realistically portrayed in the game. I think that's why people are saying that you've misunderstood.



Except that the OP didn't say that. She said that she wanted 13-year-olds (young teens) to look like 13-year-olds, not like 17-year-olds (older teens). And many, perhaps most, 13-year-old girls DO have at least the beginning of curves if they're not already all the way there yet. In other words, she simply wanted a more realistic transition FROM child TO teen, in the same way that a lot of people would like a more realistic/less sudden transition from adult to elder(ly) by having a "middle-aged" life stage.



I don't think you need to apologize for your opinion. It's your opinion to have and we're all free to have opinions. But I do think that you have misinterpreted the OP's intent and are putting words into her mouth that she didn't actually say and then taking her to task for it, which is really kind of rude.

Maybe someone mentioned this but there is a less curvy teen body shape. If you make them a little shorter than other teens then it is like a middle age group. There aren't many clothes for this body so it would only be worth it if you are keen on doing some conversions. A less curvy teen might also sound better than a curvier child.

BTW I browsed around the net trying to find out what age children stop believing in santa and the median is about 9. Does that sound wrong to you? I was about 9 but I was also quite shy, naive and we moved a lot so I figured I just didn't get the word. Maybe parents who sit around on the net discussing this sort of thing don't have time to raise informed children.

There is an old project to produce teen fem and adult fem body shapes. However, that does not complete another body stage. Also, female body shapes (and maybe males too) look more varied and less predictable than sim bodies.

I think teen sim clothing meshes which are somewhat more androgynous used with stretch Skelton to shorten the sim could be useful for the more in-between look. That is one thing, but if you say curvy child, that immediately springs to my mind at least a child sim (Who look about 8) with added boobs. I really don't think that was what was meant, but using the word ‘curvy child’ is an unfortunate word combination. Apart from real world sensitivity on the matter there are also some rather horrible boobed sim child meshes around(mostly they were on the exchange) with some equally disgusting stories, one I read was about a boobed child sim being raped by some passing male adult. Things like that leave a very bad taste in my mouth and what I immediately thought of when I first read 'curvy child'.

My understanding of this is based mostly on my husband's experience in computer systems administration, so I don't doubt there are other realities in other fields. I'm glad the experience that comes with age is still valued in your line of work. That's as it should be!

And to stay OT, I'll chime in with my completely immaterial opinion that the devs did a great job with the age groups overall. I'd love to have had a middle age, but heck, after years of playing Sims 2, I'm still over the moon over the fact that sims have an entire lifespan, birth to death! The absolutely most discouraging thing about the original game, for me, was the fact that families could never progress.

Yes, I agree that was a rather risque mistake ("curvy child") on my part. I apologize for that.

Oh I know, some of those were absolutely godawful. When I still visited the Exchange, I reported a few of those.

I wasn't curvy when I was 13! *sniffle sniffle* it's just not fair *sniffle* y'know?

Anyway, on a more serious note, maybe you can make a request to some of the modders who like to work on teen body shapes. I think a pre-teen shape is a pretty rare piece of custom content, unless, y'know you'd prefer to use some of those boob'd skins on the Sims 2 exchange. I never liked them, but that's the closest I can think of when it comes to seeing CC similar to the attempt at creating a more preteen-esque body shapes. Hmmm...maybe clothing could work for you, perhaps? StretchSkeleton to make 'em a bit taller?

I dunno, I think your best bet is requesting.

Except that, at least in your original post, you never actually put those two words together. You said:



So, I see no reason for you to apologize for anything. Don't apologize for not saying what people think you said. With that final clause there, without any further clarification, it was very clear that you weren't looking for C-cupped 6-year-olds but rather for more realistic-looking young teens, especially once you said that it annoyed you that young teens look like 17-year-olds.

I dunno, call me stubborn and aggressively pedantic because I can certainly be both at times -- Friends of mine who are into astrology tell me that it's because I'm an Aries/Taurus hybrid, born on the cusp -- but I think that if you're going to communicate with people in written form rather than in spoken words, then it's of vital importance to, actually read what people say and then respond to what they actually said, not to what you think they might mean. Maybe I'm overly-sensitive about this issue, myself, because as a Christian who disagrees with what a lot of other Christians think about certain issues and who gets into a lot of debates with them both online and face-to-face, I get words put into my mouth often, so that people can then try to beat my arguments down. To me, it's more forgivable when discussing things face-to-face because human memory is fallible, and it's very easy to not remember exactly what someone said or didn't say. But when you can easily scroll up and look at what someone actually said and their words are clear and unambiguous and the person obviously isn't trolling just to mess with people...Well, there's just no excuse. And on a written forum when someone does that to someone else, that's when big blow-ups tend to happen. Over something that no one actually said. Doesn't make much sense, does it?

ALL that said, you know what would be really cool? It would be really cool if there could be a physical transition somewhere in the teen age range. Like, children would age up to a young teen body shape and then maybe at the end of the first week would "pop" into the older teen body shape currently used for the entire stretch of teenhood. Kind of like pregnancy pops. Girls would get curvier, boys would maybe get more muscular or something.

In theory, it'd be easy to add the necessary morphs to teen meshes, I think. I've gotten pretty good at adding pregnancy morphs to adult and teen meshes, myself. The snag would be programming the transition, which I have NO idea how to do, if it could be done at all. Maybe some programming could be hijacked from the programming that governs pregnancy pops, which is based on tokens, I believe, but I don't know. But it'd be cool! And maybe something similar could be done to make adult bodies look a little more middle-aged at some point in the adult life stage, too.

It'd be cool if teen girls shot past teen boys so you had that awkward period when all the girls have gotten their growth spurts and the boys haven't. But in play I don't find I miss it much. Though I could use it to explain the situations in which a teen girl is chasing a teen boy who's too old for her, and he lets her catch him...That doesn't work the other way around, though.