Bodies In-Between

For those of You who don't know (which would probably be anyone reading this besides Kyle Pearce) my day-dreams basically consist of permutations on the lives of four people, tangled up in one over-arching story-line. The following scene involves a character I first met roaming the cereal-aisle for a break-fast food which would cut the roof of her mouth. Since then, I've been calling her MaC-E (pronounced like Macy), short for Masochistic Cereal Eater, and nothing more fitting has ever occurred to me.

She's very near and dear to my heart, as she's a toned-up/toned-down version of me in high school (the real high school me would be strangely both too boring and too unbelievable to worth writing about).

***

She didn't necessarily feel terrible about her body. No, quite to the contrary. She frequently brazened outfits which elicited various "helpful" tips from the school faculty. "Dear, You'd let Your natural beauty shine if You didn't wear such dark make-up," "If You want success, You have to dress for it." And even, her favorite, "Honey, You're leaving all the wrong things to the imagination." Why they thought she would take this advice seriously, why they thought her impression on her peers was of any consequence to her was, well, a rather steady source of amusement, and yet...

The television roared innocuous light and color in the living room. The modern family's hearth, she mentally sniped. A place of gathering. It was her mother's (second? third?) child. Absently blathering. Enunciation clear and void of regional origins. Each voice was like a baby without a navel. Unnatural yet universally appealing. However, this sterility was was necessary to travel clearly into the living rooms of boob tubes everywhere. Not everyone could afford the kind of speakers Mac-E's mother bought. Yet, despite their hefty price-tag, artificiality broke through. A reverberation on each sound, note, and syllable which reminded MaC-E to the point of distraction that this performance was not for her, but at her. To persuade her to keep watching, keep listening. To persuade passivity.

But she couldn't. She had too many questions. She questioned the motives of even the most innocuous programming: save-the-earth PSAs, commercial-less news programs, public broadcasting, etc.

She longed for interaction. She wanted a Q&A session for these gods of the glow-box. Like right now, she wondered about this woman dancing before her in quick cuts. Yes, You look wonderful from that angle, doing that, but how do You look when You sit down? Do You look like I do? Do You find that Your stomach ripples up unevenly, unpleasantly... unphotogenically? Do Your thighs spread out and flatten?...Is anyone really attractive from every angle?

***

This rough draft may be edited and re-added at later points...and certainly expanded upon, (suggestions welcome!) but first some reflections, and credit. This entry was inspired by a late-night (early morning?) conversation with Michelle Hutt while watching Shakira music videos...

***

At the heart of the body-image problem are two simple truths:

1) The longer You examine a human body, the more flaws become apparent.

2) The only human body an average person gets to observe with any scrutiny is his/her own.

Thus, the saturation of the media with increasingly undressed persons is a double-edged sword. Sure we get more human bodies to scrutinize, but only after they've been sanitized for Your-viewing-pleasure.

In conclusion, let's make awkward porn...