Writing on the Body

Introduction

Writing on the body is a theory that has become quite popular in the past few years with the increasing interest in marginalized cultures. We have created this site in the hopes that it will encourage more discussion of this topic inside and outside of the college classroom. Basically, writing on the body looks at the ways in which we write identities onto others by drawing conclusions about the significance of body appearance. In other words, we write others' identities onto their bodies by making decisions about hair color, body size, multiple piercings, skin color, and other visible markers. In order to understand this theory, you must recognize that the body can be seen as a text. In other words, the body can be looked at in much the same was as a book, a song, or any other type of material that can be read and written on. When we say that the body is a text, we mean that the body is a place where others attempt to understand who we are as people by interpreting what our clothes, body size, and birthmarks mean. There are three main ways of looking at writing on the body:

I. Inherent Inscriptions

The human body is already written on at birth in terms of race, gender, and other aspects that we cannot change, but this kind of writing does not have significance until it is re-written and read by others. They give it cultural significance and determine the meaning of the bodily text in positive and negative ways.

Example #1: Women are often written on via sexualization. A text is written on their bodies about their sexuality and is used to create texts that devalue actual lived experience. In other words, because women are sometimes seen as sexual objects only, their education levels, socio-economic groups, and characters are often ignored. Example #2: African Americans are written on in a number of ways. Their skin color(s) provide ample space onto which many texts can be written. For example, African Americans are good athletes and/or dancers, and African Americans are violent and/or inferior to other races.

II. Writing on Your Own Body

There are several ways in which we write on our own bodies: tattoos, multiple peircings, scarring, modification, clothing, hair color, etc. Although we may not apply the tatoos or do the peircings, we choose which ones we want and where we want them to be placed on our bodies. By doing so, we inscribe texts onto our bodies that we wish for others to read.

Example #1: A young man gets a tatoo of a bloody dagger on his forearm. He may wish for others to see him as violent and aggressive. Example #2: A college-aged woman dyes her hair blue and gets a nose ring and an eyebrow ring. She may wish for others to see her as different, lesbian, and/or independent.

III. Re-writing Others' Bodies

Although we may choose to modifiy the size of our earlobes or tattoo our faces, we cannot guarantee that our self-inscribed texts will be read in the ways that we wish for them to be read. We cannot control the text(s) that others write over the texts that we have created.

Example #1: Although the young man with the bloody dagger tattoo (see above) may want others to read his tattoo as representing aggressiveness, someone else may re-write over it and look at the man as uneducated and criminal. Example #2: Although the college-aged woman who dyed her hair blue and got multiple piercings may wish for others to read these inscriptions as markers for difference, lesbianism and/or independence, others may re-write over her meaning and look at her as a deviant from society and/or a drug user.

Of course, these are only some of the ways you can examine writing on the body, and the examples are given only as spring boards for thinking about the ways in which our bodies are written on and the ways in which we write on the bodies of others. To find out more information about writing on the body see the resources on our theory and criticism page.

Throughout this site, we will explore writing on the body as it takes place in popular cultural artifacts: film (Psycho), music (Ani Difranco), literature (Edgar Allan Poe), and photography (Mapplethorpe). Feel free to roam around our site and learn about the different ways of writing on the body.

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Tattoo pictures found at Urban Primitive. They are the original artwork of Daemon Rowanchilde.

This site last updated on March 15, 1999. Come back soon for updates!