2003-06-10

voluminous accounts of contradictory insecurity

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part one

Tan and Tone America, as horribly capitalistic as it may sound, is my gym of sorts. The machines in the robotics department were built primarily to tone various muscles in the female body. It caters exclusively to women who desire nothing more than physical change.

I've often asked myself why I harbor a desire to, as I've stated within these cyber-pages, turn my shoulder-blades into something lethal. I am wittingly exchanging my Rubenesque physique for that of the narrow, French-entitled 'Garconne', though I won't cut my hair to fit the image.

At the tender, horrendously mis-guided age of thirteen, when I was still in the single-digit size category, I avowed my displeasure with my body. Why? I have yet to retroactively unscramble that media-driven enmity, though perhaps I just did.

On my previous appointment with my reproductive endocrinologist, he proclaimed I had a 'cosmetic disability' by having polycystic ovarian syndrome. The phrase forced a smirk, and I admitted, "It seems so grossly superficial to be this concerned with physical appearance."
He responded, smoothly and immediately, "God made us creatures of vanity for a reason."

The aim for my art, however, was to capture the intrinsic beauty of imperfection, with my propensity toward nicotine smiles, wrinkles, dry skin, dark eyes and acanthosis.

Lying down with a paramour of yore, I wrapped myself in his indubitably sempiternal limbs and counted his pores while he slept, extending my tongue so that the tip grazed the velutinous outskirts of his chapped mouth.

What is considered beauty as a whole is relatively platitudinous and disposable to me. With an entirely hypocritical and paradoxical closure, I am still going to exchange my Rubenesque physique for the boyish silhouette of a 1920s flapper.

Who knew nicotine smiles would eventually turn out to be so goddamned, unforgivingly fastidious?

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time & machine