How to Really, Truly See Yourself

I spent my twenties fantasizing about having a three-dimensional mold of my body. What did I look like not just in the mirror but in space? How much room did I take up? I once or twice saw magazine articles about artists who made plaster molds of pregnant people’s bellies, rotund and planetary in their magnificence, the bright white of the plaster a form of illumination. These artists lived in New York City, like I did; one of my favorite things about living in Manhattan was that, for the price of a subway token, I could travel to the Village, or the Bowery, or Tribeca and visit the studios and haunts I read about in Vogue, W, and Mademoiselle, the massive rooms with cement floors, with air that smelled like clay and paint and was lit with the genius of, for instance, capturing the shapely curves of gestation, of big, taut bellies. I never knocked on the doors though — I lingered on the sidewalk, my reflection like glaze on the window, obscuring whatever there was to see inside. <a href="https://humanparts.medium.com/on-really-truly-seeing-ourselves-bbdc6c77a66">Read More</a>