When you think of body modification, what do you think of? Maybe you’re visualizing a person with many tattoos all throughout their body. Perhaps you’re thinking of someone with multiple body piercings in non-traditional places. Or are you imagining someone with different additions to their bodies? Well for me, when I think of body modification I think of dance, specifically Cambodian classical dance. Continue reading
Hello! I am a mammal!
I have never particularly enjoyed shaving. Growing up, its importance was never stressed. In fact, my mom would tell me she was happy it was winter because it meant she didn’t have to shave — the impression I got was that she didn’t really like to do it, herself. When I was a preteen, she bought me razors and shaving gel, but didn’t pressure me to use them, and shaving didn’t seem to be a rite of passage among my peers, the way buying a bra was. I was in no rush to do it myself. Continue reading
I never knew that one’s skin could tell so many stories until I realized that the most common questions I get are about my skin. Continue reading
The simple beauty of a butterfly tattoo can be a thing of beauty as well as a thing of oppression. Few can see how this may come to pass, but it is an occurrence that has happened to at least myself. The butterfly tattoo is the epitome of feminine tattoos, but that can also lead to come questions if one is not fond of butterflies. Continue reading
Underweight is mean you have a body mass index that is below 18.5. Many folks think being fat is a health risk, they might think being too skinny is good. But being overly skinny carries its own health risks,too.
About four years ago, I happened to have poor absorptions of nutrients. At that time, my weight was unintentionally dropping, and I was overly losing weight. I lost almost 20 pounds in just one month. In school, classmates and teachers started to give me dirty looks. Even when I go to the grocery stores with my mom, people ooked at me like I was from a differernt planet. I felt so bad. I did not try to lose any weight, and I was eating as much as I used to, since then I even tried to eat as much as I could everytime till I throw up. My family started to worry about me because I eat so much, but still did not gain any weights. They forced me to stop exercise and rest, at that time, they would just put me to bed after dinners. Finnally they took me to the doctor. The doctor said that I might suffered with an eating disorder. But after he arranged the blood test and all of those long examations for me, he told my family that I was diabetic, and I had to go on drugs to control it. Because diabetes affects the way my body uses the blood surgar, I would lose weight if my body do not get enough of suger to generate, even I might be eating as much as usual.
For most people, losing a few pounds without meaning to could be a good thing to them. But it’s important to know when unexpected weight loss is a serious cause for concern. And sometimes, unexpected weight loss can be a sign of a depressive illness, many cancer cause unintentional weight loss as well.
Last year Kelly Martin Broderick wrote a blog post about The Great Wall of Vagina. As an artist myself I was able to appreciate the wall as art. I cannot imagine the time and effort the artist put into every cast. The fact that so many women took time to participate is amazing!
I decided to do a bit of research and came across PENIS. Big ones, short ones, fat ones, long one and the list goes on. Joseph Tailor’s project entitled ‘Art Work “100” ‘ is a casting project of many penis. This made me extremely uncomfortable. I didn’t understand why. I don’t mind looking at my boyfriend’s penis. His is pretty cool. I also didn’t mind looking at the wall of vaginas.
(Yes that is a Golden Penis. Not to be confused with the Golden Snitch)
Thinking hard -no pun intended- about my feelings I came to the conclusion that it was because of the form of the penis. Let me explain:
The vaginas on the great wall are all carefully placed and appear to be that of relief sculptures. They are delicate and unique. This is truly how a vagina looks.
While each penis is also unique I felt almost as if they were looking at me. I realize it was easiest to capture the mold of a penis while it was hard but this is not realistic. A man’s penis can only achieve maximum size when it is erect. Does that mean you’re “less of a man” when it’s not?
Scarification, the process of creating raised designs on the body by cutting, branding, burning, or freezing the skin, is a body modification practice widely unheard of (compared to the more popular practices such as piercing and tattooing) in the Western world. Its practice in the U.S., originally adopted by the gay and lesbian subcultures of mid-1980s San Francisco, was revived by the neotribal movement of the early 1990s in an attempt to create a more “authentic” aesthetic while also romanticizing exoticism.
TW: blood, mildly graphic description of scarification process
“Does she seriously think that she looks good???? Yuck”
“It’s like those ladies at the beach or pool who wear bikini’s and their fat it bulging out and yet they think they look good! Good enough to appear day after day like that! Ladies, think of how many eyes you are hurting!!! Lol.”
“She looks so ridiculous…cowhide, leather, beef jerkey, lost at sea…exactly. Attractive…NOT!!! She truly looks like she is in her sixties. Whether she actually brought the child into the tanning bed or not, she is a terrible role model. She needs some psychiatric help to get over that obsession with tanning.”
Although I am not the biggest fan of perpetuating harmful ideas in order to make a point, I am just about to do that. Even though I find the above comments repulsive and upsetting, I think it is important to pull them away from the Facebook context and to put them on here so that our blog readers can consider what they have been seeing on Facebook.
The above comments are in regards to the recent story about the mother who had her young daughter use a tanning bed even though it is against the law. I will be honest, I do not know a lot about this story, perhaps I would have read more about it if I hadn’t seen these comments on Facebook bashing her. I am not defending her actions, but I also want nothing to do with condemning her either, I don’t know her.
However….
If I were to take the route of acting like I know something about this woman, I would say that it does appear that she has some sort of disorder, maybe an addiction. If we look at the story through this perspective I wonder if these people who made the above comments would be saying the same kind of things. Let’s replace the addiction of tanning with alcohol. Would this public speculation even make sense anymore? Because of the physical marker of this disorder, people feel that they are able to openly comment of the “unsightly” nature of it. Then again, maybe these same people think alcoholics are disgusting too. The physical aspect of this disorder mixed with the chance to criticism a woman in her role of being a mother has created a Facebook freak show frenzy. How about we all do ourselves a favor and think before we post?
Disclaimer: While I have never experienced baldness personally, drawing from the literature on disability and class discussions I felt an affinity with the topic. If I indirectly offend anyone I offer an apology in advance.
Recently I’ve noticed a lot of rabble on facebook about a topic I never thought would pop up in my newsfeed: Bald Barbie.
There’s a facebook group dedicated to pressuring Mattel to create the Bald Barbie for children who suffer from hair loss due to cancer as well as Alopecia, and Trichotillomania. Mattel has finally released a statement saying they will create Bald Barbie but it, “will be a friend of Barbie, which will include wigs, hats, scarves and other fashion accessories to provide girls with a traditional fashion play experience.”
Hm. So, the new doll cannot be labeled a “Barbie” and she still has to have fashion accessories which, in my interpretation, (and perhaps this is my raging feminist coming out) means people who have hair loss still have to cover up their scalp since baldness cannot be accepted as normal.
Not only will Mattel’s new doll not be a “Barbie”, she will also only be distributed to children’s hospital for reasons of “directly reaching girls who are most affected by hair loss”. But what about the children who are not in hospitals who have experienced hair loss? And how does a hospital reinforcing to the children that they’re still beautiful actually combat the main message that Mattel sends out to the general public on a day-to-day basis, i.e. beauty has a certain standard, and if you don’t have the hair and body for it, you will never be beautiful.
Could placing the doll on the shelves of a toy store create too much of a sense of normalcy towards hair loss?
From the past course discussions on disability, and the invisibility and inaccessibility that many disabled people have expressed they have experienced; I don’t think that Bald Barbie does much to enhance the lives of children who have experienced baldness.
By only distributing these dolls to hospitals Mattel is stating that baldness is still a disability and is associated only with illness. Mattel could release Bald Barbie in mainstream stores and allow Bald Barbie to be viewed right next to a Barbie with hair but then what message would Mattel be sending to the children that experience baldness? Beauty standards can actually deviate from what Mattel portrays them to be?
If Bald Barbie were to be considered equal and sold in the mainstream market right next to a Barbie with hair I think children who experience hair loss could actually feel acceptance and beauty towards their baldness, especially when Barbie is such an icon for female children for femininity and glamour.
I think Mattel’s creation and distribution of Bald Barbie is just another way to emphasize disability rather than accept it.
Baseball is America’s pastime, but there is one problem, and that is the use of steroids. Steroids a synthetic hormone that promotes the retention of protein and the growth of tissue and the use can help and athlete build bigger muscles more faster. the problem i have with steroids is the unfairness that baseball gets by using steroids. To me i think it is a fake sports because now a days you don’t know who is using or now so you really don’t know who is naturally talented. I was reading the article and it discussed how if a player gets caught using steroids the first offense is treatment, which is basically a slap on the risk telling them not to do it again, and for five violations is a one year suspension. I do not think that it is fair, I think the rule should be first offense should be the one year suspension and the second offense should be getting kicked out of the league. The only reason i say this is because when they get older they are destroying their bodies for drugs, all they need to do is work on the talent that got them there, not put harsh chemicals in their body that can scar them for life.
These grown men should not be babied because they should know right from wrong and that steroids are bad, but they insist on using them. Should the League just legalize steroids so that way majority of the athletes don’t get in trouble and just call baseball America’s past time and just leave it in the past because baseball is not the same as it used to be, because I don’t think that this many people were using steroids back in the day. even though it is harming their bodies by making 
them infertile and gives you harmful psychological changes and even cancer, these athletes still use them just to get one up on their opponent.
Majority of the athletes playing baseball are on steroids, so we should just legalize it because even though they are getting caught they are not stopping. In order for the League to stop steroid use they would have to drug test the players everyday, but that is a waste of time and money because these men are grown they should know right from wrong. What should the commissioner do so the League can once again be America’s Pastime
Unruly Bodies 