This week for my Critical Experiences class I read a section of a contemporary arts thesis by Amy Kathryn Watson. This thesis explored the themes of skin, body, and cuts as they relate to contemporary art, common sayings, and societal norms.

I remember in 2019, while I was interning in the Bay Area, I had the harebrained idea to take my clunky intern bike and ride all the way from Sunnyvale to San Francisco with a fellow intern Zoe. 20 miles into the trip on that hot day, I remarked to Zoe that I was glad I had started wearing sunscreen daily, but I was worried that when I got older I would regret not starting sooner than the age of 20. Zoe replied simply with, “what’s wrong with looking old when you’re older?”

That question really shifted things for me. It got me thinking more critically about why I was worried to age, and what that meant for my outward appearance. I used to tell classmates that I hoped I died by 30, so I could avoid the slow degradation of my body. This reading had a similar message, “active bodies will always bear testimony to their life on their skin, will be marked by time and lived experience.” Once I started thinking of my body this way, it helped me see aging as something to be celebrated, and not just dreaded. I look at others bodies and the stories they tell, what experiences they’ve lived through, and the marks, chosen or not, that they bear as a result of their life up until that moment.

But that’s not to say that my relationship with my body is perfect, and that I don’t still struggle with existing as a conscious being that has a physical appearance. I obsessively working out in eight grade, chasing the elusive six-pack abs I saw plastered across media. Every day I look in the mirror feels like roulette, and has more sway over my mood than I would like to admit.

“The male body builder exposes his defined muscle and vein structure, his inner workings, on the surface of the skin, allowing these to protrude from beneath, literally wearing his depth on his surface” What does my body say about my inner workings? Since I started climbing 7 years ago, people have commented my large forearms, broad shoulders, and light frame. I feel my limbs struggle against fabric that doesn’t quite align with my proportions. In my worst moments of body dysmorphia, my body can feel like a taxidermy mount, spread across a frame that I don’t feel belongs to my skin. I’ve started to trend towards baggier, formless clothes that once again conceal the depths, my bodies inner workings.

This past week, my sister pointed out the first gray hair I had ever seen on my head. Nearly three years ago, I looked in the mirror for the first time and noticed that the hair on my temples was higher than I remembered it being. I went down a hair loss prevention rabbit hole and found no shortage of products promising youth and longevity. “The individual takes the body and moulds it towards the ideal of the ‘model body’: indeed the very phrase used to describe cosmetic surgery - ‘nip and tuck’ - is suggestive of the skin as a garment that can be worn and altered accordingly.”

This is extremely relevant to ‘hair systems’, toupees that can be donned and taken off at will. As wellness technology marches forward, there are more and more body modifications readily available that make the body feel like a garment. Ozempic, botox, tanning, skin whitening, tattoos, tattoo removal. All of these and more make it feel like our body is akin to a video character selection menu, where nothing is permanent and anything can change according to the whims of the user or society.

Project reflections

This reading was extremely relevant to my project topic of taxidermy.

  • Skin can be seem as stretching out to cover out what’s inside. In the case of taxidermy, you take real substance and replace it with polyurethane, artificial bodies that are only there to give shape to the outward skin.
  • Many people try to artificially extend their youthful features and appearance. Taxidermy is all about trying to extend bodies past when they expire, and pose them in interesting ways so that they are pleasing to look at. Some parts of the body, like eyes, are replaced entirely. In the case of fish, their vibrant colors are often lost in death, and painted on their mounts.

In addition, I also met with ITP librarian Margaret Smith to discuss my topic. We discussed a few different ideas around ‘digital taxidermy’ and particularly focused on different archival methods. I learned how librarians and archivists think about longevity, and the many different factors that go into choosing a medium. We discussed the longevity of digital storage, paper, cassette, rock, and more. I came away wanting to explore creating these different mediums instead of just writing about it.

I didn’t have any updated systems map from this reading, but it did make me think a lot more about my relationship with my own skin!