“The Body Image Project: Beauty as a Relative Concept,” created by artist Larry Kirkwood, made its appearance on the University campus this week. Since Monday, 20 casts of people’s bodies, showcasing a variety of shapes, sizes, genders and races, have been on display outside the EMU.
This presentation will end today at 4 p.m. with a lecture by Kirkwood on body image in the EMU Gumwood Room.
“I’m an old, ex-hippie that really believes that this could be a better world, so I try to use my work for that,” Kirkwood said.
Kirkwood believes that advertisers focus too much on sexuality and the result is that many people solely define themselves by it. People should not define themselves by just one part, Kirkwood says. When a person looks at himself or herself in the mirror, he or she focuses on three places: the chest, the stomach and the thighs, Kirkwood said, but there are so many other great places people tend to forget about.
Kirkwood holds an undergraduate degree in philosophy and said that this has lead him to do a lot of work with social issues. The Body Image Project began in late 1993, emerging out of his frustrations with the media’s portrayal of the human body in advertising, especially a woman’s body.
Women’s magazines are the worst at projecting body image, Kirkwood said. The glossy consumer magazines give women an unrealistic perception of what the human body looks like.
“We’re not symmetrical but if you just see these pictures out there, they’re airbrushed and computerized for symmetry and then all the sudden people think ‘Gee, I’m a freak,’” he said.
Kirkwood has firsthand experience with the misconceptions and fears people have about their bodies. He has made 531 body casts and more than 300 of his subjects were women. He remembers making the cast of a woman with uneven breasts and displaying it on a university campus. One student came up to him looking relieved and told him she thought she was the only one with uneven breasts. Now Kirkwood makes it a point to feature a cast with uneven breasts at each of his displays to show women that it’s totally natural and normal.
The truth is that most people are afraid to speak up about their bodies and don’t know how to properly look at themselves, which is Kirkwood’s main message. By viewing his variety of casts, he hopes that people, especially young students, will learn to appreciate not only their own bodies but also those of their peers.
“A person’s gender or skin color – that’s a given. You don’t do anything to get there, so why do we judge people based off of that?” Kirkwood asked. “”Everybody’s genetically different. You’re not going to look like somebody else. You see beauty within each one.”
One of Kirkwood’s most powerful casts is that of a woman with two holes in her chest where her breasts used to be. The cast belongs to a woman whose breast implants broke and leaked into her body, and the silicon ate up her insides.
“I’m not being judgmental; it’s up to you what you do to your body,” Kirkwood said. “I just want you to do it because you want to do it, not because somebody says you don’t measure up.”
The media are not the only sources of body discrimination. The way people are raised can cause this issue, Kirkwood said. Through his travels to many different universities, he has noticed that many students don’t interact with students from a different background than their own.
“I think a lot of times we have a feeling that people grow up like we do and that’s just not the case,” Kirkwood said.
He remembers when he first discovered that he was “the white guy.” Kirkwood was making a cast for a black woman, who giggled and said that if her friends knew she was a white guy’s house they would not believe it. Later on, he became friends with a man from the Bronx while at Duke University, and Kirkwood told him this story. His friend laughed and said he had known he was “the black guy” since he was 4 years old and no one has let him forget it since.
Rather than dividing people by gender or race, Kirkwood suggests dividing them up into groups of unreliable and reliable people. In these groups there will be all races, sizes, shapes and skin color, Kirkwood said.
“We make comments to people if they’re a little shorter than average, if they’re a little taller than average, particularly females, and you know it just deflects away from who they are,” Kirkwood said. “It just seems like we pay attention to the stupidest things.”
Kirkwood’s 4 p.m. speech will address his Body Image Project and issues including discrimination in the workplace, sexual assault and violence toward women. He pointed out that women are still making lower wages than men, about 76 cents to every $1, while African-Americans and Hispanics earn even less for the same jobs.
“I take (The Body Image Project) to colleges because you guys are going to be the next CEOs. If there’s going to be change, that’s where it’s going to come from,” he said.