"Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails

"Hurt"

"I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of shit
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here

What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end

You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way"

So, I'm listening to Johnny Cash singing this song, and it makes me think of our last class discussing the idea of self-harm.

This image has so many horrifying meanings to it. It makes me honestly a little sick to my stomach. I also can't handle surgery on TV and bloody movies. That is my queasiness tolerance not to compare this disturbing quality of the poster to TV surgery and bloody movies. When asked what does this image tell me, I can say that it tells me silence is never women's best option. She is ground head first, losing her ability to speak, to protest, her face. The face is what most would consider our most human aspect. It makes us unique, allows us to have expression, to show our feelings. All that is left, currently, is her lower half: the clitoris, labia, vagina, maybe half a uterus, her legs. Her ability to violated vaginally is still intact. This image makes me sad and angry. But most of all, it makes me not want to stay silent. Yes, women have come a long way, but we haven't gone all the way. This image tells me that women still have a ways to go. Hope is not lost or even ground but silence is not the answer. She may not have a face, but I still do. I still have my voice, and I can use it.

"Reading" the news

Body modifications are in the media every day, and there is not better place to find such daily indications of how the body is to look than in the news: newspapers, online news, etc. I may not read the paper everyday, but I will browse through to read headlines, scan captions, examine the photos, click on photos of the day. Like the television news, news prints have become increasingly visual with pictures taking up more and more room. Images are, as we have all begun to recognize, culturally powerful; they encapsulate an event into a finite moment. At best, a photo can present a whole story, and at worst, they can reinforce negative stereotypes or perpetuate ethnocentric ideas.

Lately, reading the paper, I have become more aware of the pictures I examine. I see subtle messages and influences that dictate to me "how things are." Hearkening Foucault's knowledge/power idea, pictures on the media present cultural ideas as norms, naturalized and inarguable. Scarily, they can transmit powerful ideas to a large group of people or, specifically like the New York Times, to a particular class. In a way, these images police and curb the actions immediately of those who read them and a little bit later on those who interact with the readers. To be fair, I admit to "reading" two forms of print: New York Times (paper) and the BBC News (online news.bbc.org). Both forms of news cater to specific audiences both socioeconomic class defined and regionally defined. I began to read the BBC news when I was studying in London so I could be abreast to European affairs. But the audiences is not what I wish to discuss. The aims of this post is to cause any readers to be wary of what they see.

The news is "objective." The images one sees would never say, "In the Business section, we see men (Asian or white) in suits. This is the appropriate uniform for business people. A business career is typically a male profession." Or better, "In Fashion today, we see more very thin, young, white models. They frail frame makes them the perfect hanger to place clothes upon. This way designers can objectify them so that their clothes are the "true" show and not the people displaying them. She has a dead bird on her head, she is wearing clothes that resemble a garbage bag. This is the image that many young women look up to as the perfection of beauty." No, the messages we read are rather informative. They give a face to the story. To decontextualize the news print images, one must examine with a particularly harsh eye. Not all the images presented are negative. The new Burkini allows women who follow hijab to wear swimwear and be lifeguards. At the same time, the only women shown in this attire are thin and Western perceived as beautiful. Images of "exotic" lands either show colorful happy people in traditional attire or desolate locations with young children wearing torn and dirty Westernized clothes.

Scanning the New York Times for the past week, the only times, I see images of minorities is A) African or African Americans who have passed away, who are playing sports, or who are in court B) Asian males who are in business suits and participating in the stock market C) Asian immigrants who have horrible living conditions. Women are models, mothers, or teachers. I don't think that the reporters use these images to say, "This is how things should be." But to look at them at face value, one can think, "This is how things are. And how can I change this?"

I will post some images, and even post a photo of my own. See what you think. What story can you say about this image. Look beyond the happy faces, the colors, the tears. What is the story really saying. A picture holds within its borders a proverbial 1,000 words. What do you read?

the "Modern Primitive's" Mistake

While Daniel Rosenblatt presents many ideas about the body modifications such as resistance acted upon the body, mainstream and its constant flux, and therapy/self realization through body modification, I found his discussion of the "modern primitive" the most enlightening.

"'Primitives' or 'others' have long had a hold on the Western imagination. It is de rigueur these days to put the words in quotation marks, indexing the author's awareness that whatever it is that obsesses our imagination is as much or more a product of that imagination as of encounters with other societies" (Rosenblatt 1997: 293).

I think that the context he placed the idea of primitive and primitive-ness is especially crucial to his research. While primitive is currently not considered very politically correct, ethnocentric, and wrong, it is essential for this research to proceed. Identifying tattoos as tribal or having "primitive" like qualities sits in a specific Western ideology which illuminates more about Western cultures and those who practice these body modifications than the elusive "primitive" society who apparently has none of the problems of Western society. Through placing the definition of "primitive" within the Western context of imperialist nostalgia and first in his article, Rosenblatt allows the reader to follow the progression of these specific body modification practices in a Western context. I enjoyed the historical aspect of Rousseau and Benedict.

It was easy as time to get lost in the rambling prose and to sometimes wonder where a particular point was going, but overall article was enjoyable and very thought provoking. From an ethnographic standpoint, I found there was a lack of fieldwork examples since he mainly relied on the text Modern Primitives. The ideas were unpacked somewhat disarrayed, but very thorough. He moved his information both "in" and "out" focusing upon both the intricate aspects of this research within the community and broader social implications. The dialogue of mainstream, resistance, and self discovery all interwove to establish a rambling picture of the situation.

Again, ending with the idea that the "primitive" modern primitives identify with is their own construction, Rosenblatt ends with his own research with the Maori of New Zealand saying the the tattoos they receive are a unifying marking rather than marking out an individual. If there were more examples such as this, I feel that the author would have better expressed his point, because while he research is obviously very extensive and well thought, he was not present in the text save the beginning and the end. This, overall, gave the text a floating and at times distancing stance.

Future Body Modifications

Despite my mother’s horrific reaction if she knew, my next planned body medication is a tattoo. The image I wish to place on the inside of my forearm is a triskele – a Celtic symbol of three interconnected spirals drawn with a single line. I chose this figure because it is simple in design but complex in meaning. The triskele represents womanhood, the interconnected experience, reincarnation, and continuous movement of time. The tattoo would ideally be pink because my mother is a breast cancer survivor. I feel that this would be a marking that I could grow with since tattoos are permanent and that it is vague enough to have personal meaning to me without others ascribing it meaning. The placement of the tattoo may change depending on when I receive the tattoo, but I am fairly certain that the image I have selected will remain the same.

Splitting Hairs

I've known for a long time that both of my grandmothers and my mother greyed early: meaning that they started to have grey hairs. Early is, of course, relative. When I say early, I mean in their early 20's. Shortly before my 21st birthday about a year ago, I pulled my hair back to wash my face. To my surprise among my dark brown hair, something stood in stark contrast. It was small, it was singular, it was white. My first white hair. I wasn't sure how to react to it. I wanted to make sure it wasn't a random blond hair that I find from time to time, so I pulled it out. Checked against the white porcelain sink, the hair was beyond a shadow of a doubt white.

I wasn't sure how to take it. It bothers me slightly, but not in the fact that it makes me old, I just don't know how to deal with my white hairs. Yes, I have found more. I do have about 5-10 white (not grey) hairs scattered about the top of my head. My hair is changing on me, and I'm not 100% sure that I want it to change. The white hairs give me conflicting emotions. I think it's rather neat to have little white hairs about. I think they confuse those who see them as much as they confuse me. Some tell me to pluck them out; I don't see why, they'll just grow back. Other people tell me to dye my hair. As much as I enjoyed being a red head, I want to see my hair change color on its own, and not be surprised when the white hairs begin to take over.

The white hairs, I must say, take me by surprise. There is something inevitable about them. How does one alter that biological change? Do I even want to?

Changing the outside from within

My dieting narrative:

So, in short (and this will be the shortest statement of the narrative), I tend to ramble. I will go on and on, but so it goes (as Vonnegut would say in Cat's Cradle).

In second grade, students would sit in front of their classroom doors waiting for their teacher to come. My teacher, Ms. LaVerne, had a large bench for all her students to sit on. As usual, before class, I would sit next to my then friend, Sarah Lobdell. Sarah was always a petite child. I remember thinking that my thighs were so much larger than hers and not liking my thighs. But I did not diet. I don't think I really knew what a diet was. My mom was always on a diet. But like curse words and drinking alcohol, diets were for grown ups. I could diet when I was a grown up. Diets meant eating salads and not eating desert. And well, I could wait to grow up because I did not like salads.

Going for my regular check up years later, the doctor informed me that I was under the average height for my age group. I was strangely pleased with this fact. I enjoyed the idea of being smaller than other people. Starting middle school, I realized that I was not as tiny (weight wise) as the other girls. While I didn't start to limit my food intake, I did start watching what I wore. Fat. That's what I felt. I forgot about it some days, but I never liked for alot of skin to show. I wanted to wear baggy clothes. And I stopped feeling cute.

As middle school progressed, the feeling of ugliness and fatness went hand in hand. Now one might think that since my mother with her constant dieting and quest to be thin would project that feeling onto her three young daughters. However, I did not feel this was the case. Mom ate salads because she was a grown up and that is what grown ups did (this in and of itself can be examined and picked apart. My mom was insistent that we did not have access to a scale. She felt that constantly weighing ourselves would be negative for our self esteem. I do think that she had a point. But when a boy told me that I was ugly in sixth grade and I felt that no boys liked me, I "knew" in my head that it was because I was ugly (since my face was covered in acne and I was, according to me, overweight. I started playing soccer in seventh grade, and one of my teachers asked me if I had lost weight and that I looked good. It was such a high. I felt like a million dollars. I was validated, and the feeling immediately disappeared when I started eating. I felt that every bite was me gaining weight.

I try to take a philosophy that if my clothes fit than I am maintaining a good weight. Soccer kept me very in shape. While I was never tiny, I didn't feel quite so fat. I have a phobia of being picked up, not because I'm scared of heights. I don't want the person picking me up to think that I'm fat and heavy. I want to be little and light. I am 5'2", and I like being short. I know that part of this liking being short is that I'm perceived as light/tiny. I don't "diet" per se, but I do watch what I eat. I am very aware of my food intake, and yes, I do think of food as sometimes the enemy. I know where this information comes from. I am aware of where I'm getting these images. Dieting is no longer for grown ups in my head. I don't have to eat salad all the time because I am 21. I was shocked when my younger sister told me that when she was in elementary school, her and her friends used to go on "diets" in the cafeteria, i.e. eat their salads and not their cookies. She recalled that they inevitably forgot and would eat the cookies. But play "diet." That fact is a little scary.

I still think I'm heavy. I don't like being picked up. I have a fear of getting fat. My dieting narrative does not reflect what I eat, but how I behave to food. I enjoy food, I'm from south Louisiana everything is fried goodness. I still eat, but I work out. Maybe not every day. But I feel fat when I don't. I try to run off the weight. Food is good for one person to live and to live well. But that doesn't mean we view food in a healthy light. I think like most Americans I desire a diet to change my outside rapidly without changing my life style. I accept more today than I used to that my body is beautiful. I accept that this is who I am. But in some ways, it feels more like giving up and truly accepting and loving.