Each person lies within the spectrum of natural human variation, both unique and within a widely-diverse continuum of bodyminds. As this is the case, nothing seemed more appropriate for discussing body schema and the intersection of identities than a literal assemblage piece — layered and gathered letters, words, and phrases. All of the magazine lettering was torn from a single fashion catalog and was completed in one sitting, laid over the handwritten notes I had so far taken for this post.*
I would love for this to be all I wrote about it, but as it’s academic work and also because alt-text is access, there will be unpacking.
Call it “Body Schema” after the heading. Or “Ransom Note”. Or nothing at all. It’s a multimedia piece assembled on a piece of unlined, brown notebook paper. In a combination of handwriting in black ink and in torn magazine letters, words, and phrases, the left column is headed by the handwritten phrase “body schemas” and reads:
O Beloved
Beauty is
in the details
– yes a genuine
vast field
of
natural variation
– drape it loosely
or wrap it
around yourself.
The right column is headed by handwriting stating, “There is no accounting for other people’s perceptions,” a quote by the radiant pop star, activist, speaker, and “proud Black trans woman”, Mila Jam.** The torn magazine text says:
BI and KIKI
two gender-and-sexuality labels. KIKI is an outdated term, but in 1950s white lesbian culture, it meant a feminine (woman) who was interested in other feminine (women); this was considered taboo in the expected butch-femme normative relationship pattern. Basically, it was used to describe a queer femme who was ‘queering’ wrong. It was also an adolescent nickname of mine, given by my parents, who were aware of the derivation, having been in or adjacent to 1950s white lesbian culture. One of my parents meant it affectionately and I can enjoy it on that basis. (This may share a derivation with the kiki or ki of Black ballroom culture: a femme-centric party. But don’t quote me on this.)
Next is a handwritten alphabet in block capitals and the words “firebird” and “phoenix”. I often write the alphabet to loosen up for writing; the words featured in an audiobook I am reading.
Below that is written a quote from the English novelist, Terry Pratchett***, who commented on humanity that we are “between the falling angel and the rising ape.” This was brought to my mind by Dr. Sunara Taylor’s statement that “Disability is between health and death,” and Judith Butler’s comment that gender is also between — between male and female, and my observation that disabled gender and sexuality are often placed somewhere between the child and the eunuch: infantilized and desexualized. So many betweens for us all to navigate in!
Beneath that are collaged words over handwritten which read
Open landscapes &
possi – Visi – bilities
The word possiblities is torn in half and divided to reveal a doodle about Bi Visibility Month, Week, Day. This is both revealed and concealed much like bisexual and biromantic identities are, depending on circumstance and observers’ perceptions. Surprise; it’s Bi Visibility Month! again. The thirty days of the year in which bi people are visible as themselves no matter the relational status we inhabit.
Beneath that is another line of handwritten text which has been obscured by the torn-out phrase
“from walking to dancing”
How do we do bodies? How do they move? We all have a technique, says Butler, of walking — and of dancing, of eating, of lying down, of all the different ways of movement that answer Jean Deleuze who asks, “What can a body do?” As well as being unique to each individual bodymind, these answers are also circumscribed and molded by cultural and societal expectations of ethnicity, gender, or ability.
Across both columns at the bottom of the page read the magazine-torn words,
RANSOM NOTE
under which is hand-written
“Found: an assemblage of identities. Describe to return.”
the piece is signed, in a combination of handwritten and magazine letters
— an educated bat
*This catalog deserves its own unpacking as a Swedish company that relies heavily on Asian design and imagery. Though I have been complimented for clothing I’ve purchased from them (on deep, deep sale), the more I read the copy the more I am committed to to thrifting as my main source of clothing.
** I spent most of my time working on this assignment trying to find the talk in which I first encountered her statement, encountered while surfing along with YouTube’s algorithm once upon a rabbithole bingewatch.
*** Sir Terry was also quite fond of footnotes, and his work on gender, neurodivergence, and physical differences manifesting with magical ability is something I would also like to explore and discuss more deeply.
