Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

The first thing that caught my eye about the Hannah Höch collage was the big fluffy brown hair. I was surprised that this grabbed my attention before anything else in the image because usually my vision is directed toward the centered or brightest object, which in this case would be the light bulb. Next my eyes traveled to the tire, and then to the BMW decals. The car theme seems related to the way men covet both cars and women. This is, after all, a depiction of a woman; there is such evidence as curvy hips and a parasol, and the title translates to "The Beautiful Girl." She has her left elbow extended upward, as if she is in the process of primping.

I was also struck by the more masculine hand reaching out with the timepiece, making me think of Edison's statement on page 31 of Tomorrow's Eve, in which he says "..almost all women - while they are beautiful, which isn't for long..." suggesting a temporariness of attractiveness in females.

Similarly, it could be said that cars do not stay beautiful for long either, unless maintenance is impeccable. Cars need motor oil, tune-ups, tire changes, air pressure checks. Women get injections of Botox, make overs, anti-wrinkle creams, face lifts. Both cars and women are seen as commodities, things to boast about and flaunt like trophies because they do demand routine alterations and polishes in order to persist in such an ideal fashion. Women, through Hannah Höch's collage, can be seen as a metaphor for automobiles in terms of upkeep and the possession of objects that make one feel pride. It is also interesting to think about how cars are typically gendered as female too, like when men say "She's a beaut" or "She's my pride and joy" but they are talking about a candy-apple red Camaro rather than their wife or girlfriend.

When one watches "Superstar..." they are drawn into the tightly-knit household of The Carpenters as well as the state of America in the 1970s.  A recurring theme is perfection; Nixon describes The Carpenters as being demonstrative of "America at its very best" and Karen wants her recordings "to be perfect."  America's interest in wholesomeness is a pressure to Karen, and one woman even admits to never having trusted The Carpenters' idyllic image.  Tabloid headline-like suspicions are voiced from a critical voice, the source of which is never seen.  Do The Carpenters have secrets? 

Toward the end of the film, the overlapping of many Carpenters songs coupled with choppy footage of bathroom tiles and laxative boxes draw the viewer into a sense of delirium.  The caption about rationing being over by this period in time, replaced for an emphasis on consumption and storage of products -- especially food products - makes the viewer question excessive American cultural behavior.  Overall the film develops a hypnoticism, through the mesmerizing imagery, especially that of a shifting composer's hand and the shifting meter on the scale that displays Karen's shrinking weights throughout the film.   

At the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City, there hangs behind a sheet of glass a black leather jacket autographed by The Ramones.  I recall the jacket being draped over the frame of an anonymous, headless mannequin in a display case that serves as an open casket for this dead object.  This jacket very well might have once appeared on album covers, club stages, in promotional photographs.  In its rather fleeting lifetime, it may have traveled the world, been engulfed in clouds of cigarette smoke, and witnessed screaming Ramones fans.  Now it hangs lifelessly in this tomb of musical artifacts, among Beatles suits and Bo Diddley's guitar.  

When The Ramones dissolved and lost their original, legendary line-up, the leather jacket was donated to the Hard Rock Cafe.  As it was set up inside its glass box, the life and luster drained out of its thick black material and zippers.  It was a slow and seemingly painful death, but the jacket showed no signs of struggle or protest.  Although the jacket hangs to be seen by all, it no longer sweeps across stages on the shoulders of an influential musician or slips into the shadowy back room of Max's Kansas City.  Out of the people that once saw this jacket on a regular basis - the other Ramones - the founding members are all deceased.  Even the places this jacket once frequented are no longer in their place of origin.  Max's Kansas City closed its doors decades ago and CBGB was gutted, its contents intended to be transplanted to Las Vegas. 

The jacket will remain in the New York City Hard Rock Cafe indefinitely.  Donations can be made out to the Hard Rock Cafe.  To leave flowers or messages for the jacket, please consult the Hard Rock Cafe staff before doing so.     

Bull's tongue was dried out and glued to the floor of his mouth.  He was very well insured for the first time in his thirty-something years.  

Margoulies was making small observations, aloud but ostensibly to himself, about Bull's leg.  This was the way Margoulies liked to proceed...[what] he called 'putting it in the right context.'

And then, suddenly, silence.  

Oh God, thought Bull, I hope it's nothing serious.  Although another craven little part of him secretly hoped that it was serious enough.   

Bull lay still and waited and waited, holding himself in readiness for the doctor's pronouncement.  Bull began to experience acute anxiety as he felt Margoulies's hands toy with his upper left thigh, moving slowly, palping the flesh with careful, detached fingers.  Bull could conceive of nothing more embarrassing than an involuntary erection - especially if a man, such as Margoulies, was touching him. 

He stared fixedly at the way the plaster had been teased up into little fronds on the wall.   

Bull's cunt lacked pubic hair, apart from a thickening and tufty teasing of Bull's leg hair.  And the cunt appeared in the pit of Bull's knee.  Margoulies of course had seen the vagina.  He felt faint, breathed deeply, but within seconds he steadied himself, and that was a relief, within the body as a whole.

As he did this, Bull had to cant himself up, on to the curve of his buttocks, coincidentally adopting the same posture as he had when he first became aware of the vagina.  Bull felt his leg as a soft, shrinking, and vulnerable thing with specific firm, yet calm, movements. 

The muscle at the top of Bull's calf was clearly bifurcated underneath the skin to allow space for the entrance to the vagina, whilst the kneepit itself bulged out to house the projection of the mons, and the clitoris that already peaked from its edge.

Margoulies loomed in the periphery of Bull's vision, decisions that reflected the justness of this particular phenomenon coming to his attention and his alone.

If one were to view a day in my life as a performance, they would see a few costume changes and a variety in the activities I partake in. Some of these activities, like playing games online with my boyfriend, are thought to be mainly masculine and avoided by females. I genuinely enjoy them. I also have a Rocky poster on the wall in the living room of my apartment and shelves stocked with gaming consoles, so this setting would probably surprise some people. Additionally, I have quite a few unisex apparel items, which would factor into the costumes . This word unisex is interesting to me, I hope to get into it in my corpus sometime.

On the other hand, I enjoy being a girly girl. I love to dress up and curl my hair and apply mascara, so the audience would see this feminine part of me as well. I don't feel that this is vapid or tragic; I am not obsessed with image by any means, but I enjoy the preparation of getting ready. I would hope to bring to light the mixed cultural elements that are not often discussed in association with individual genders. My improv would challenge the notions of what is feminine behavior and what is masculine. I would hope to prompt some discussion along the lines of "Girls can play video games without being tomboys? Girls can enjoy fashion magazines and action movies? Well, why not? Why do we always act like you must pick one set of interests to devote yourself to and abandon all the other options?"

The Southern Comfort film screening today was interesting for me in a number of ways.  I realized while watching and listening to Robert's trans friends and their individual lovers that I lost track of who had begun life as a male and who had begun life as a female.  As the film went on, I was able to understand that this did not matter.  What mattered was the fact that these people got to fulfill the identities that they had always internally connected with, but the disrespect and medical neglect they were met with during their lives was terrible to hear about and to even see visually (like in the case of Cas' breast removal). 

The wisdom of Lola Cola at the end of the film about why nature delights in diversity yet human beings do not, really resonated with me.  It took a lot of courage for the people in this documentary to confront the fact that they were betraying their true genders by dressing and posing to fit the expectations of the sexes they were filed under at birth.  This kind of courage is unfortunately not respected by enough people because it threatens the traditional norms of gender that have been hammered into peoples' brains since Day 1.  The story of Robert Eads illustrates the unwillingness of society to become more open to a society that does not attempt to hide or sugarcoat the truth.

One of the things I found interesting about Pumping Iron was the sort of preservation of femininity contrasting with masculine imagery.  By this I mean the way most of the women wore their bright blush and vivid shimmery eyeshadow and had pearly-pink long nails, while also exhibiting taut muscles and strong, structured legs.  Some of the times when the camera would be slowly panning up to the face of one of the female bodybuilders, I would admittedly mistake the legs for a man's.  Femininity was never clearly defined in this film, but some of the things I associate with femininity were present; the aforementioned use of cosmetics, as well as hairsprays, jewelery, bikinis, and excited chatter about getting married all surfaced in this film.  Taking these things into account, Bev Francis was the most unfeminine of the female bodybuilders.  The majority of the judges were too threatened by the level to which she had taken her muscles and form.  The other girls were safer alternatives, with pretty faces and less-masculine profiles than Bev.  The facial expressions of some of the judges implied that there is a point that female body-builders can reach before they are no longer seen as female; they are no longer feminine "enough."  They've gone "too far." 

The performances today on theatrical presentations of the body made me think about costuming and masquerading in general.  I have never been to a strip club, but hearing the second group talk about their experience made me think of celebrities and supermodels, these body images that people (mainly women) post on their refridgerators for motivation to lose weight.  I think it is cruel and ironic to think about how these images are airbrushed, tweaked, and polished; the realization is eventually made that one cannot attain such perfection because such perfection was manufactured and applied; in fact, such perfection does not exist without the help of imaging programs and photo-doctoring tools.  Furthermore, these "body idols" must invest in the production of their bodies through means of personal trainers, food specialists, stylists, and even surgeons.  It all reminds me of a quote by Dolly Parton in which she says, "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap."  Because people do not see what goes on behind the scenes of these movie stars' and models' lives, people incorrectly assume that they can reach levels of flawlessness exhibited in magazines and on television.  There is so much complexity surrounding the body types people strive toward and the actuality/truthfulness of their visual presentation.