It sounds like a cool idea but to be honest, I don't know how practical this is because assuming that the system needs to know if the user is a male / female, because if that is the case, then every single avatar that appears on the page would require 1 additional query to determine their gender

Worth considering though.

Ah okay, I understand. I will even try how it can be implemented.

It's certainly a good and cool idea provided that there are some "denormalization" that happens when the user saves their gender. It's insane to run 1 additional query for each avatar that appear on the page heh

Denormalizing genders would also be tricky because you now end up having a different search algorithm for genders too and it'll break the advanced search :|

Well, it would be possible to create two different profile-types. One for men and one for women. There you could automatically assign an avatar.

The pre-condition would be that gender-selection is mandatory when registering.

And a 3rd gender like "other" is no longer needed after it has pages.

Then a constant query would not be necessary.

Say the avatar is linked to the gender selection.

Well, I'll have a little play with it ...

Ah yes that could work as well if you don't really use the multi profile types and treat it as a gender separation