Gender neutral photos for users who don't yet have a profile picture

I am administering a web application that has male and female users.

Currently, the default user photo is:

I don't like this because it seems rather masculine and gives me the impression that the database has me recorded as a male.

I think changing the default to this makes sense:

This is more of a gender neutral avatar.

Questions:

• Would the first image be considered inconsiderate by a typical (female) user?


• Does the second image rectify the problem created by the first image?

Note that the application does not know whether the user is male or female and so having two separate default photos, one male and the other female, is not possible.

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Edit: I have been asked to define the characteristics that make an avatar gender neutral. I am not sure I can do this objectively and that is why I choose to pick an avatar that has a very slight representation of a human head and shoulders. In other words, I prefer to solve the problem by not having a man-like or woman-like shadow at all.

Answer

Another alternative to consider is the initials of the user. This is done by the collaborative card site Trello, and many others.

So if your name was John Smith, you would see for example a gray square like you had for that first image, with the two centered letters 'JS'. A simple sans-serif and readable font like Helvetica would be great for that (you want readability to be a top priority for various sizes).

For example:

That would be the easiest catch-all solution. But to answer your two questions:

1. Quite possibly. If you (I'm assuming you're male) made an account on a website for social purposes, would you want your first avatar to be a female, with all your friends seeing it? Probably not. There are people who wouldn't care either way. But there are enough that it's something to take into account.


2. Yes, your second image would fix the issue of gender. However, the image itself would need some work, as it's not that visually appealing/engaging (that's another topic/question to ask here: http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com).