projects

• DOCTYPE
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• project 1

  • umgürte dich selbst

  • process

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  • product

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  • presentation

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      SCRIPT FOR FIRST PRESENTATION
      
      [as i read, i took off my top and wrote the words marked in bold on my torso with a permanent marker]
      
      
      
      "In order to grasp our bodies, to think of them as well as to understand the cultural gaze that fixes upon them, we must construct what our bodies can be said to mean and to look like." --Riki Wilchins
      "A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and Champagne, the only true feminine & becoming viands." --Lord Byron
      Byron's quote is from 1812, and in this project, I've evoked the ostensibly archaic symbols of phrenology and corsetry. However, I think they bear a certain significance to the subject of our class and our lives, which I would like to briefly extrapolate upon. [begin slowly removing shirt]
      
      Phrenology, often held up as an example of faulty scientific reasoning, may be considered the ur-pseudoscience; in fact, the term "pseudoscience" was first used, in 1843, in reference to phrenology. [NURTURING](Incidentally, Fran�ois Magendie, the physiologist who coined the term, was an notoriously brutal vivisectionist, but that fact belongs to another discussion entirely.) Despite the frequent mockery of phrenology, [ALIMENTATIVE] its basic concept--that of inferring moral characteristics from physical observations--is hardly unknown to us today. [ATTGCAGACTC] In its newest incarnations, we call it sociobiology, neuropsychology, or, more broadly, "genetics."
      
      Gender, sexual behavior, and weight gain have elicited some of the most fevered research into genetic disposition. All three of these fields deal fundamentally with [GLUTTON] appetite and desire, which is, admittedly, poorly understood. It is certainly difficult to make sense of how we express our gender, [DYKE] who we want to sleep with, and what our bodies look like; and of course it is tempting to look for sense in the kabbalistic code of our DNA. [JEWISH]
      
      However, if we are speaking scientifically--[NERDY] and, arguably, we are limiting ourselves to that genre by choice when we discuss behavior in terms of genetics--speaking scientifically, the idea of genetic material causing human behavior is completely specious. Assuming that nucleic acid molecules induce adults to act in a particular fashion is about as scientifically sound as deducing someone's philoprogenitiveness from their occipital ridge. [SERIOUS] Because of time constraints, I am not offering citations--not supporting my assertions--but the essentialist argument has been patiently dismantled each time (and there have been several times) it has reemerged in the recent past. [LAZY]The idea of nature overruling--or, frankly, even competing with--nurture is as unsound as the concept of phrenology. Or, perhaps, it is equally sound as the study of phrenology; with this equation in mind, it might be instructive to examine the science's practice in its golden age, as we navigate through this era of the New Phrenology.
      
      The Victorian era is noted for its emphasis on control of body and mind. Many of our most powerful institutions of social control, [FERTILE] such as the modern prison system and the public health department, trace their roots back to the Victorians. Individual self-control was the all-consuming ideal; this was the age of temperance societies, [INTEMPERATE] anti-masturbation devices, and--of course--the corset. You've heard this all before. But for all the emphasis on mastery over personal failings, the Victorian age also produced phrenology, which proclaimed--with the force of Science behind it--that moral and intellectual qualities are innate. [WEAK] While exercise of various mental faculties might lead to some betterment, each person is limited by the dimensions of their skull.
      
      This formulation sounds very familiar to the modern corporeal traveler. In one breath, Science claims mounting evidence that physical embodiment is based on genetics--that is, innate; in the next, it exhorts us to continually monitor and manipulate our bodies. There are innumerable tools: [MORBIDLY OBESE] food pyramids, bariatric surgery, body mass index--tools and terms to impute fat, a physical characteristic, with a clear moral assessment: [pause, write BAD clearly across front of stomach]. This judgment may seem irrefutable hiding under the cloak of health and therefore Science. [SICK] The empirical link, though, between fat and health (or lack thereof) is, much to our surprise, hardly solid. It is shored up by our cultural certainty that the exterior body reveals interior truth.
      
      [UNCONTROLLABLE over top of breasts] And, for us as for the Victorians, the corollary to this axiom is that physical control over the body--whether by the individual or more broadly--is a moral obligation. To reject that control--to willingly move outside gender, sexual, or beauty norms--is not only abnormal but immoral. [PERVERT] Out of necessity, then, these norms are policed a hundred thousand different ways. I've used an admittedly obvious one here: the corset's little sister, the brassiere.
      
      [take off bra] Many others have expounded on the cultural significance of the bra, and I don't want to bore you. [FEMINIST] I only want to touch on two aspects of this particular "foundation garment". The first is bra sizing as a structural means of enforcing bodily norms. I used possibly 15 different articles of underclothing in this project, and the complexity and variety of bra geometry even in this small sample was astounding. Standardization in bra sizes is clearly founded in comparison; that is, what makes a B cup a B cup is that it is larger than an A and smaller than a C. [DD] It's difficult to ignore the similarities between American bra sizing and our educational grading scale; this is further corroborated by the absence of an "E" from both systems and the willingness of manufacturers to label a breast as a triple or even quadruple D-cup rather than an F. [FAILURE]
      
      The other angle I would like to touch on is the association of bra-wearing with age. Not only are bras appliances to create the illusion of perkiness--that is, youth; they are also brandished as talismans to ward against the outward signs of aging. [OLD] Vigilance is urged to avoid sagging and drooping, beginning at the first signs of adolescence. Indeed, a girl's first bra is a potent symbol of her coming of age.
      
      That such rites of passage are happening earlier and earlier has been the source of much hand-wringing lately. The age of onset of puberty has fallen steadily since the days of phrenology. [PRECOCIOUS] In the first half of the 19th century, the average girl could expect her first period around age 17; today, the average age of menarche in the United States is around 12 and a half. [HORMONAL] While the forces behind recent changes in pubertal age are hotly debated, scientific consensus is that nearly all of those years can be explained by better nutrition. In another word: fat.
      
      [WOMANLY] And so we are reminded that female secondary sex characteristics are almost entirely made of fat, and [SLUT] the moral baggage attached to it. Which is, basically, where we began: at the determination of gender, sexuality, and lived experience. Determinism is as determinism does.
      
      
      

• project 2

• project 3