Last semester, I took an advanced senior seminar entitled Body Projects in which we studied common, as well as uncommon forms of body modification and treatment. After reading this week's Poetry Thursday prompt, I wanted to dig up a few observations and realizations I made in one of my papers:

Identity, which can easily be understood as one’s perception of oneself, is now, more than ever, being equated with one’s physical and exterior appearance. While it is implicit that identity formation and acceptance does involve the participation of an outside party, in that the creation of identity is always juxtaposed with standards within one’s culture, “Cosmetic surgery literally transforms the material body into a sign of culture” (Balsamo 210). Identity no longer belongs in the mind, in one’s perception, but rather materializes itself onto the body’s parts. This materialization, these body modifications, because they are dependent on culturally accepted norms, is what defines the body as “a sign of culture,” as the bearer of cultural and social attributes, which in effect can redefine one’s identity...

While we understand that identity, if left solely to individual perception, becomes indeterminate until it is also placed within a cultural context, redefining that identity solely on the cultural context is also problematic. It renders identity, like gender, as obscure and ambiguous, and places pressure on the individual to continuously define and redefine himself through body modification. It fragments the body into parts, where Western ideals of race and beauty as well as an upper class image are values, which could potentially become a problematic global standardization project, stripping the globe of individual identity, and replacing it with what’s culturally “en vogue.”

excerpts from my paper Redefining Identity Through Cosmetic Surgery, a response to Anne Balsamo’s article, On the Cutting Edge: Cosmetic Surgery and the Technological Production of the Gendered Body


It's unfortunate that our bodies have the power to become our voices, and even more unfortunate that unlike Whitman, we as a society no longer see "a man's body... a woman's body [as] sacred." Even in our attempts to define ourselves in opposition to the status quo, we continue to use our bodies to form our identity against a cultural context. I don't necessarily think that this is detrimental to the process of identity formation - what is detrimental is that we no longer form ourselves from within, but rather from someone else's vision. It no longer begins with our souls, but rather ends there. It seems as though as our exterior bodies become more malleable, the very substance of our identities, the core, the heart, the soul, also softens.

This week, my poem is about this very idea of identity formation, how as individuals we fall subject to the gaze, become trapped within it, and in turn also become eyes.
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Brush in your eyes
Your eyes drop
color onto my cheeks.
A hungry breeze, eating
warmth from my skin.

All you know are brisk layers,
tints, shades, hues
of you – not me.

Vicious you. Drops
spots of paint across a body
that wants no texture, only
smooth clean lines, a
smooth clean surface,
free of sticky smears .

I think: I am free
of dissolution when
you turn your back,
point your toes
away
to a new canvas, and
I laugh, rejoice
at the solution of dissolving
coated dips off my skin, but

in the ecstasy of
ridding myself
of you, I find

I cannot cleanse your eyes off my body
layers do not dissolve
but overlap, color
upon color
until all I can see are spots of me
cleaving underneath.

Labels: Poetry, Writing Prompts