BODY AND TRAUMAS

Social Practice - Power Play by Donatas Tretjakovas


It is difficult. It is difficult to speak about traumas. It takes a bit of courage to be able to speak about it with other people. It is difficult because people prefer to see only what they want to see, to be the same. People prefer to be normal. But what is normal? Society did not hesitate to give us an answer to then shape us according to it with time. The society formed an opinion of how humans should act, to look and be considered as normal. Society decides how the human body should to look. There is a proper cult of the perfect body. Thousands of people want to look like the idols we see on magazine covers and they are ready to sacrifice their identities to become like them. Society also tells us how our body should be built. Created standards are the reason for insecurities in our appearance. But what about people who are not as perfectly created as their idols? What about all people that find themselves with damaged bodies?

We are not perfect. Perfection does not exist in nature. But imperfection makes us special in our own way. It gives us a character. Body traumas are hated by the majority, they find it non-ecstatic or not created properly. In my opinion, every trauma on a person's body gives him specific charm, shows a real human, an imperfect human, an alive human. To me, it is a synonym of real, unique beauty. I found people with traumas powerful.

MAP OF TRAUMAS

draft 1

draft 2

In the past, for Chinese girls, it was fashionable to have extremely small feet. From childhood, the feet of a girl were put into very tiny wooden shoes. However, as the girl was growing the wooden shoes were still the same size. They were causing her terrible pain. When girls were stopping to grow, shoes were removed, but the feet were traumatised forever. It was a sacrifice for Chinese small feet beauty standard. Society shaped body standards are constantly changing with time. Archaeologist Uzma Z. Rizvi describes the trends of body standards in her article "Decolonization as care". In this article she touches different topics related to norms in our society about body, race and appearance:

"The normative person in a past is often a body that looks and acts like a contemporary normative body — often not one that looks/feels/ could be imagined as mine: normative, and yet othered through time. We need to think through how we might make sense of these many different ways we might imagine past bodies, or othered bodies, or any body that is not the normative privileged body." (Uzma Z. Rizvi;"Decolonisation as care"; p.88)

In my map, I showed some of my body traumas and insecurities. The idea of presenting it as a labyrinth was born by looking at the maps of megacities, especially New York. Each trauma has its colour, shown in the legenda of the map. My map is also a game and to play it, you need to print it and give a copy to each player (at least 2 people). The idea is to finish the labyrinth and collect as many traumas as you can. To collect it you need just be as near to the colour as possible. The person who collects the biggest amount of traumas and finishes the labyrinth first wins. Somehow this game tries to go against today's view on this topic, where traumas are more associated with less privileged people, not winners.