I’m new to Zwift but I’m disappointed that the female avatars do not look remotely feminine! It’s great there is the option for different skin tones, but disappointing that the female faces look so square-jawed and masculine. What would be great is if you could categorise the avatar face options into ones that are clearly female (and look feminine), male faces, and more androgynous ones too. There is so little to encourage women in cycling and make it an inclusive all gender sport. A company with as much renown as Zwift could be doing more to make us feel represented. This is the 21st century!
Hi,@Fay_Margo, welcome to Forums! I’m Francisco from Zwift Support.
I wholeheartedly understand your perspective about the need for more customization options to make the avatars resemble the riders more closely. I’ve already filled out the form to share your thoughts with our dev team. Your feedback is important, and I appreciate the effort to enhance our experience!
Ride On.
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I get it but do you know any men that really look like the male avatars?
It’s a game and that’s my game piece.
I would prefer for them to focus on issues related to game function.
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I think it’s a reasonable request. The avatars (and customizing with kits and bikes and wheels) are a not insignificant part of the game. My wife, for example, who I’m trying to nudge into Zwift, doesn’t care a wit about drafting dynamics, climb profiles, or any of that (yet?) but if she could make her avatar more like her, she would feel more immersed in the universe and maybe enjoy it a bit more.
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I hope your wife never looks like an avatar.
They are not real representations of a human being.
And all those things you listed that she doesn’t care, she really does because those are the things that attract all the other people to Zwift and your wife will be attracted to Zwift because other people are there.
I agree. People should feel represented. If they have green hair or aspire to green hair, they should have green hair. If they have some other personal characteristics they want represented in the game, ideally they should have that.
I hope your wife never looks like an avatar.
They are not real representations of a human being.
I don’t think anyone thinks they look real but they are certainly customizable for how the user wants them to look. My wife has red hair. She wondered why she couldn’t make her avatar have red hair. OP is simply asking for more customization/better representation.
And all those things you listed that she doesn’t care, she really does because those are the things that attract all the other people to Zwift and your wife will be attracted to Zwift because other people are there.
My wife doesn’t care how many people are on Zwift. She’s not looking to get in a group ride or make friends with people online. She just wants to work out on the bike when there is snow on the ground.
You might say that she DOES care about how many people are on Zwift because that drives development, etc. but we are getting way down in the weeds here. I maintain it’s a valid request because people use the platform in many ways with many different priorities.
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This is also unavoidably an issue about groups–represented groups and underrepresented groups. Recreational and competitive cycling are massively male dominated, and white dominated. And that creates certain atmospheres. And atmospheres can serve as barriers to engagement for people who don’t see people like them as represented.
That means that it’s more important for women (in general) than it is for men that female avatars look different from male avatars. Just how group psychology works 
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And, just to beat this dead horse, you can bet that if all the avatars were primarily more feminine, men would be incredulous that there was no way to more correctly represent themselves.
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What’s interesting is that everyone commenting on this post - and thank you for your comments, it’s good to drive debate - is male! I’m sure there must be many more male riders than female on Zwift (I guess the reason why the avatars seem more geared towards male features like facial hair and blunt jawlines …) but maybe with more obviously female options too there would be more female riders .
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I think he was saying that to drive home the point that it actually is a problem, not that it would be a solution to go that route. Men are looking at the male-looking avatars and saying ‘what’s the problem’, but they wouldn’t say that it the avatars looked more female.
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You’re totally right - I was reading too quickly and totally missed his point 
thank you!
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No worries I myself have never ever misread anyone ever, not at all 
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I think that as longevity on Zwift increases, the relevance of avatars’ appearance diminishes. I don’t log the highest mileage, but I ride enough to have reached level 100. I no longer pay attention to my avatar, don’t change kits, and all my rides are just on 3 bikes. My girls enjoy pranking me by messing with it.
Actually, I’d love a custom AI-generated avatar to match how we would like to look, but there are so many functional improvements Zwift could make! Right now, I’m paying for Sauce for Zwift because of the outdated HUD, and I rely on the Qz app for virtual shifting since Zwift hasn’t implemented it on game.
Who on earth even has the time to look at the avatars’ faces? (Except when changing something in the garage, or occasionally in the start pens with the random camera cycle, and …)
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Functional improvements are great, but I think it’s a mistake to think that both can’t be worked on. The people who would be improving the avatars won’t likely be the same people working on virtual shifting. My own experiences in corporate settings left me with lots of open time when there were still ‘pressing issues’, because my job/skills was not about the pressing issues
But it’s also true that there are people who care about this–whose experience with the software involves this issue quite a bit. Those of us who don’t look at our avatars much aren’t really whose input matters here, in the same way the input of people who don’t race isn’t really relevant to discussions about how to improve racing. I don’t look at my avatar much, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an issue that should be addressed.
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Very fair points! Possibly I’m more bothered about the look of the avatar than I normally would have been because I recently had a disfiguring bike accident to my face, leading me to turn to Zwift while I recover … I want my virtual face to look at least look vaguely like me, while my real face recovers! Also - another more general point to add is that given Zwift provides such a vast selection of different face shapes - from memory I think there are a least 12! And different versions of short hair, facial hair etc, they could at least provide a few more feminine options to match the masculine options, especially as most of the men commenting aren’t really bothered what their avatars look like anyway…
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That all makes perfect sense. I know Zwift has expanded what avatar shapes/styles are available to people, but I think there are still 3 male body types/sizes, and only 2 female. Which itself shows a lack of care given to how women are represented in the game, I think.
Almost all the avatars that I see are from behind.
I seldom seen the face.
I wish the tail light color would match our racing category.
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