Reflections on "Birthday Suit with Scars and Defects"

This Tuesday, the piece that I found the most compelling that we looked at was "Birthday Suit with Scars and Defects" by Lisa Steele. I really liked how she treated her body like it was something she had been given at birth, and she was documenting the damages it had sustained since. When we look at a person, especially a young adult person, I find we tend to see them as they are in that moment, and think 'that is what this person looks like', without realizing that there were many years in which they looked like children (because they were children), and we don't realize that soon they will become older. Although Steele doesn't speculate about the future of her "birthday suit", as she documents the marks different stages of her childhood on her skin, we get a sense of the life of the body, particularly the skin.

The thing that struck me most about this work, however was how un-sexualized/sensualized it is. When the video begins, we see a naked female body, which immediately brings to mind sexuality or sensuality--we kind of assume that the video will address issues of the female body and female sexuality, but it doesn't do that in the ways one would think. Her body is not meant to be a sexual object. She documents her various scars and marks, as someone pointed out in class, kind of coldly and clinically, as if doing an autopsy. At the same time, though, I felt like it was kind of intimate, with the tone of her voice and the noises in the background and the slightly awkward way that she positioned herself in front of the camera. It manages to be intimate but completely non-sexual. After a while, though she is completely naked, and obviously female, I think the viewer sees Steele as simply a human being with a body, to which they can relate--having their own body, their own history, and their own scars.

I did a google search of the title of the piece, and I got this interesting video that someone else did; the description says "approximation of Lisa Steele's Birthday Suit with Scars and Defects." It's a lot shorter, and the woman is not completely nude. Strangely, the slip that that she has chosen to wear might give this video a tiny bit more of a sexual tone, I don't know. 

Also, it doesn't seem to have any sound when I watch it; my speakers seem to be working, and every other video on the website has sound accept this one, so maybe it just didn't upload correctly, or maybe it was deliberately. You can tell she's talking, but you can't tell what she's saying, although you can sometimes see her face and it is very expressive--more so than Steele's face was in her video. I don't want to make any assumptions, but certain aspects of the video, like the fact that this woman seems to be wearing a wig make me think there's a possibility that she might be transsexual or transgender--if so, the video being deliberately silent could be meant to express the refusal of society to talk about or legitimize trans* bodies. Again, I really don't know, I just thought it might be a possibility.