Sunday, May 28, 2006



So is this the chest I want one day? I have been thinking about my body for a long time now, in an abstracted, slightly disassociated way. I think that I treat it like a doll-body and of course, that is my privilege. Not everyone has the shape of body that they can manipulate in the way that I do but at the same time, perhaps I would like to create something more from the flesh that I have?

I have been taking study breaks while I work on my take-home exam which involve a site called 'xxboys', where i got this photo. It's a photography project by a French transboy called, Kael. The blurbs by some of the boys are really progressive and simultaneously critique the project- the trans freak body as an erotic exotic... the relative absence of black faces/bodies. There are also a couple which discuss the process of becoming something feared, from whom little old ladies protect their handbag, a black man.

Mmm. and at the same time as I envy and perve on these bodies, a conversation I had with a friend a while ago, rattles around the back of mind. about infatuation with masculinity. about the way a trans identity might become another rejection of the beauty and the kinds of masculinity that inhabit the bodies of women. Wondering to what extent my desire to have my breasts removed derives from my discomfort with the parts of my body that jiggle and flop and fail to conform to taut, toned standards of beauty. But shouldn't it be a person's prerogative to tamper with the vehicle they're in, to modify and adorn? I'm just not that wrapped up in breasts, overlaid as they are with so much cultural baggage. milk machines, symbols of feminine mystique. Floppy symbols of my body becoming slow and heavy in adolescence. Off with them I say!

7 comments:

shannon said...

hmmmmm, yes, of course. but where is the line between the two, perhaps?

crankypants said...

between man and woman? or girl and woman? Maybe there isn't one. Maybe I will make a fine woman without breasts? maybe people will proliferate so many different ways of being a man or woman that it won't make sense to talk about the two categories anymore? Especially after the socialist boys start popping out the babies!

shannon said...

no i mean between a reaction to dangerous social constructions of what is beautiful (with regards to weight etc) and a reaction to dangerous social constructions about gender? if that makes sense?

crankypants said...

ok, that makes more sense. um, yes, you always make sense my love. you're right of course, I suppose it's very easy to situate the current boyish aesthetic in vogue with queer scenes, in the mainstream fashion focus on slim-hipped, pre-pubescent-esque girl bodies.

but i suppose the line must be somewhere around the mark where you go from girl-ish to boy-ish. cause you know, that mainstream image of the supposedly androgynous woman is perhaps even more overtly obsessed with conveying femininity. I suppose it becomes subversive when you really can't tell. when you don't worry about those key signifiers like mascara and actually start wearing boyish clothes that aren't still cut to accentuate your frail little waist. geez, i could be talking total shit. you'd say wouldn't you shannon?

shannon said...

hmmmm yes i agree with you here my love, it's not shit you are talking at all. i always have trouble with this one, oh how to simulataneously deal with sexism and i guess what is just reinforcing the gender binary... that whole kind of 'i love my womb' kind of 'feminism', you know? maybe that's different again, but related?

i think it happens a lot on the left, people don't know how to deal with gender. it gets this kind of 'we wouldn't have this problem if there wasn't capitalism' response which you know, on one level i agree with, but on on another, it kind of can lead to a 'you crazy whackers wouldn't be so damn crazy without capitalism' kind of sentiment, at times, i think. rather than a 'no gender binary after capitalism' kind of thing (which obviously isn't that simple anyway). do you think? am i being uncharitable to our left?

crankypants said...

are the queers and gender fuckers the 'crazy whackers?' In terms of being uncharitable toward the left- no. i think it's up to the queers to kick some left-wing arse about frightening levels of ignorance and apathy in the matters of sexism and sexual and gender difference... argh. like that blase use of 'paedophile' as some kind of passing condemnation. totally without regard for the fucked up mainstream discourse around 'paedophiles'. That men that work with children are suspect. That homosexual equates to child abuser. wish i could have vomited in mr enviro hero's face.

shannon said...

hmmm yes the crazies are the gender fuckers. it's like in stone butch blues, you know. i can't have a conversation lately without referencing that book... i have a feeling that i'm so five years ago. but anyway, it's totally all about that. aha! yes. xo