A Slice of Humanity, Exposed

I finally got to see the Body World exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto last week. As a painter with years of study of human anatomy, this show really looked fascinating to me, and it was, although like the study of anatomy itself, it was intimidatingly complex. For those of you not familiar with the show, its a display of cadavers and various body bits that have been preserved by being permeated with plastic, so that they don't have to be floated in the formaldehyde that makes close observation difficult. Also, when treated by this process, the cadavers are temporarily flexible enough to be posed in positions which stay after the plastic hardens. I ignored as much as possible the side show aspect of the display but come on, Gunter, posing someone as if they're doing a jump on a skateboard is more Barnum and Bailey than Damien Hurst! But it is hard to deny that it's bringing in the crowds, much like a public hanging used to in the good/bad/- your philosophy of human evolution/devolution here - old days.

I'm also a painter with an interest in social phenomena, and what spoke to planet fatgrrl was the reaction of some of the crowd to a longitudinal cut away slice of a cadaver of a man of average body weight and that of a man who had weighed around 300 pounds (my old weight). Of course, there were the usual expressions of repulsion and scorn. One senior woman said, "oh, there's me!" in a tone of humour thinly disguising acute shame. Interstingly enough, I would peg her weight as certainly under 200 lbs.

One man, looking to be in his early 30's and a teacher or chaperone of a group of young secondary students, was admonishing them to notice the effect on the organs of the extra fat. What I noticed was the beer belly and flushed face of the young man, a classic case of "do as I say" if I ever saw one. "Eeeeuuu" said one girl in a veil, "Look at all the fat on his back!"

What I observed of the "slices" was the obese man looked compressed, not so much weighed down, rather as if someone had been pushing down on his head over a long period of time. That's how I have felt: compressed by those voices in my head, telling me that I need to be different, faster, smarter, anything but who I am. I've said it before: the fat is all in my head, it's a state of mind. The stuff covering my bones is just the side effect, the symptom of all that pain. Obesity in a few people may be cured by a few simple corrections of habit, but I believe that in most people who are cursed with chronic degenerating obesity, it's a much deeper problem with all the signs of a profound mental plague.