Saturday, December 23, 2006

This is Tessa



Tessa is my sister. She had food poisoning when we took these photos. She sat on my bed and we talked about this project. She said, "I wish I had a scar." I looked at her, her hair damp and stuck to her forehead, smelling a bit like throw-up. "Have you never had surgery? I've had surgery three times," I told her and she said she hadn't. Together we looked for scars on her body: on her stomach and on her knees, face, elbows. There weren't any. I wondered aloud how she could have escaped injury from her active childhood, a childhood that produced hundreds of photos of her in mid-flight.
Finally we found one, a little vertical line on her left foot. She recounted the story as a I photographed her pointing and flexing it. For a background we used our mom's drawing of a fishing boat.

This is Pat's story. Pat is Tessa's mother. (transcribed verbatim)

I just remember that she had sandals on and all of a sudden she as walking along here, just a few houses away, coming home from somewhere, and all of a sudden there was blood all over her foot. So then we discovered that she had mysteriously cut her foot and I think she was quite proud of the cut because she was only about four years old. I think also she had never experienced anything like that before and when she saw all the blood she burst into a panic state and was crying quite loudly. Of course all we had to do was just wash her foot off with cold water and put a little band-aid on it. So there was a little scar and she's been kind of proud of that scar ever since.

This is Shazi






I stared for hours at the computer screen before I finally typed these words.
Tears rolling down my cheeks... hand clutching a wet tissue.... salty mucus dripping into my mouth... I feel horrible...

Why am I feeling this way?
My sis had just said something so seemingly insignificant to some, a minute comment, a passing remark, a harmless tease... Usually I would not have been offended by what she had said but clearly enough is enough.

I was showing her a picture of this guy who I thought looked similarly to me and I joked that he was my twin. My sister then joked to say, "Ya. He's the good-looking twin and you're the ugly pimply one. Haha. Pimple face."

Usually I could always make a good bitchy comeback but whenever someone teases me about my scarred pimply skin, I would be dumbfounded, my whole 'defense' mechanism would shut down and I would begin to withdraw as if I was crawling away to hide in a corner.

I went to my bed and tried to sleep but my mind just kept replaying the words she said to me.
Trust me, this is not the first time she said that to me. I have been called worst. Pimples. Pimple boy. Polka Dot face. Moon face. Everything and anything nasty.
And usually I wouldn't be bothered but because of my insomnia (I have been having that for the past 2 weeks now), the words kept ringing and ringing in my head until it came to a certain point when I just cried. I brokedown in my bed.
I was trying to do the manly thing you know, tried to keep it silent, stifling my cries, trying to control it. But I lost it.

I sobbed.
And sobbed as if I lost the most precious thing in the world to me.

So this was the time when I sat in front of my computer and turned it on and wrote this, still crying...

It pains me to talk about my skin and now I feel ready to talk.

I have always withdrawn from conversations when skin or complexion is involved. I will keep quiet when my friends lament about a recent zit they have on their otherwise blemished-free skin. I will always turn speechless when people ask me about my skin condition. And I will always smile awkwardly when some friends make rude jokes about my acne. But it always pains me inside. Don't they care?

Its not fair.
Its not my fault I look this way. Or is it?
Is it because of what I eat? What I did or didn't do?
Is it because I don't wash my face often or because I over-do it?
Is it because I picked my pimples when I was younger (I honestly was clueless at that time and also thanks to my eldest sis who always 'pops' my pimples and I developed the habit as I grew older)?
Is it because of my genes?
What?
What's wrong with me?
Is it me?

Its not fair.
That I have to spend more effort and money on my skin.
That I have to watch what I eat.
That I can't enjoy fried or spicy food without worrying if I might have a large zit the next day.
Or that I have to cleanse my face more often than others, otherwise I would feel uncomfortable and oily each time I didn't.
That I need to spend hundreds of dollars on facial products, cleanser, exfoliant, skin rejuvenating cream or benzoyl peroxide creams (you name it, I have it) every month.
Or spend thousands on facials in facial spas or skin centres (which you will end up paying more when you buy their products that they 'promise' will help you).
Is it fair that I have to fork out an additional 60 dollars to buy medication from my doctor every single month.
(I think I could have spent close to S$2000 annually on all these products for the past 10 years or so...) Tell me is it fair?
People will just think that I have been idling my time away as my skin condition worsens when in reality they don't know how much effort and money I have spent to prevent it from deteriorating further.

Its not fair.
Watching people with clear skin having so much higher self esteem than me, chatting confidently with strangers, smiling like the world owes them a living.
That I am always feeling insecure about how I look when I take pictures up close. Or that I have to spend longer time to groom and conceal all those zits.
Or that I am always stared at by other people. Like a freak in a freakshow.
Is it fair that I have low confidence in approaching girls, to do anything for that matter?
Or knowing that nobody would kiss me on my oily pimply cheeks.

Its not fair.
That I have to be at the butt of the joke of my so-called friends about my complexion. I know I look horrible. You don't have to point it out...
From the subtle, "I don't want to pick my zit otherwise I would look like Shazi," to the trying-to-be-helpful-but-really-you-are-not, "I think its in the genes cause I saw your dad and he looks like you too," to the plain nasty, "All those oxy cream is not helping you, give up lah. Your face liddat (like that). Why still using?"

Now, its really not fair.
To add to my acne scars, I have chicken pox scars.
Horribly scarring the skin on my torso and arms, not to mention my already disfigured face.
This time I really feel like showering with acid to melt my skin away.
Recently, I had mustered the courage to go to gym wearing a singlet instead of my T-shirt.
And that would be the last time I'll be wearing singlets to anywhere for that matter.
Because while I was changing in the washroom, I overheard a couple of Malay guys talking about my scarred body (...in Malay), unaware that I was also Malay and I could understand them, every single word. At first I saw one gesturing to the other with his eyes to look at me. They laughed and then the one who noticed first asked the other guy what was wrong with me. Not wanting to hear anymore, I scurried out of the changing room, obviously embarassed. I felt like I had a disease, you know? I felt like I was in a way being discriminated against. I felt humiliated.
Tell me is this fair?

There was this young nephew of mine who rubbed his palms on my cheeks and ask me blatantly, "What is wrong with your face? Why do you look different? You are so rough." I explained it to him that I had pimples.
That night, I cried myself to sleep (I'm such a crybaby, I know)...

And now he asks a different question, one I don't have the answer to, "Izan, why do you have so many pimples?"
And he asks that every single time he rubs my cheeks again or kisses me on the cheek. And my eyes will water slightly when I reply, "I don't know."

On the eve of the past 10 birthdays of my life, I have always prayed to God for the same thing.

To grow taller and to have clear skin. After I turned 17 (and I know its scientifically proven that humans stop growing and I can never grow any taller), I've still been clinging to the hope that when I wake up the next morning my skin would be all fine and I would look normal. Every single morning of my birthday, I will wake up feeling cheated and stupid as I look at myself in the mirror. And I will ask God, "God... why am I still ugly? It is not fair..."

Even though I believe in the 'beauty is only skin deep' rubbish, I can't help to think that these scars have not only scarred me on the outside, it has left deeper scars within me.

I don't need you...to take pity on me as I am writing this not to gain your sympathy or understanding, I'm writing this primarily because I want to.

You don't have to feel sorry for me in anyway, because I already do feel sorry for myself.

"I sobbed.
And sobbed as if I lost the most precious thing in the world to me."


My pride.


Wednesday, December 20, 2006

This is Valerie












Valerie had shingles as a child. As a result her forehead is scarred.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

This is Family




This is my uncle Lars Eric. His scar is from a carcinogenic melanoma removal. It's a bit like a small crater above his knee. My lovely aunt Philippa has her hands around it in the first photo.

Monday, December 11, 2006

This is Frida










This is Frida's story.

I was mourning the death of my father. More to the point, I was coming to terms with the constant missing that one has to become accustomed to after a loved one dies. The “deafening silence”.

I was 18, living in Montreal and on my own for the first time. It was too cold to go outside, and it would have been too cold regardless of the weather. I had decided that self-destructing was the only adequate way to show how I felt. The world was going on as if nothing had happened and I resented the fuck out of it. So, I fasted regularly, stopped attending school, and watched sad films. That was my life. No friends, no phone calls. I had a stack of films by the bed, and that was my main form of human contact. I sometimes talked back to the characters. I refused my mom’s frantic phone calls.

One night I was watching a film and eating greasy Chinese food that I had had delivered at 3 A.M. It was part of the fasting cycle, the gorging after the week of deprivation. I looked down at all the empty containers and felt so disgusting and grotesque for allowing myself to eat all that disgusting food. I wanted to punish myself. More than anything, I wanted to feel anything but the weird numbness I felt.

I cut myself with a serrated kitchen knife. I had never done it before and I have never done it since. I’m not a “cutter” in the sense that it was never a habit. The scars are almost gone now, so maybe I’m glad that I won’t have anything to explain to curious boyfriends and concerned friends.

This is Fred




This is Fred's story.

I love history and scars are part of our history - but some more so than others.



Part of my parents’ story is written on my stomach. Their first child was born in 1945 after their work, lives and marriage were much disrupted in occupied Holland. Their next trauma was my pyloric stenosis (projectile vomiting) and surgery at just 10 days. Small wonder perhaps that they could never bring themselves to tell me about those days, let alone explain the mystery pattern on my body.



A small but significant part of my story is also embedded in this scar. I believe my parents’ reticence and my own shy and introspective nature worked together with this mark of my individuality to deepen some of my internal struggles over the years. In recent years, the Web has thankfully done much to break down my trauma over being uniquely and abnormally “different”.



My scar also reflects the advance of surgery. Before a simple surgical remedy was published in 1912, pyloric stenosis used to kill almost all affected infants. My scar is a life line. But since 1945, surgical technique has shown great progress, as incisions are made more carefully or eliminated by the laparoscope, and as wounds are stitched internally.

This is Carmen








This is Carmen's story.

When puberty hit, it hit hard. I gained forty pounds, sprouted hair, and developed D-cup breasts seemingly overnight. I was thirteen and my body was a foreign thing.

To my total horror and shame, I got stretch marks all around each breast. They are mostly white now, but back then they were red and very noticeable.

I cannot explain how horrible I felt about them. I felt robbed of my youth. I would always hear older women muse nostalgic about how being thirteen meant effortless beauty: clear skin, eating junk food and never gaining a pound. Flawlessness. This was not my reality.

I have various scars from various things on my body and would never, ever feel as horrible and self conscious about them as I do about my stretch marks. They are the first thing I think of when I’m with a new lover. Their visibility is the first thing I consider when trying on clothing.

They are my scars. I felt disfigured and only stopped feeling so very, very recently. I still cringe whenever I see them. I’m cringing right now as I write this.

-----------
And later:

Svea: Has anyone else (other than me) ever commented on your stretch marks? I think you said that your boyfriend (whose name escapes me) thought they were pretty. What did he say? Can I include that in your story? I think it's important. Do you?

Carmen: I'm not sure if ... [my boyfriend] said anything about my marks other than that they're pretty and he hardly notices them. I've always been too scared to mention them to anyone else.

-----------
And then, a bit later:

December 11th:

Svea: Can I put the portrait one of you in, under Carmen? I love that photo.

Carmen: Hmm...OK

December 12th:

Carmen: Just saw the post........... OK, sorry to be super annoying BUT I didn;t realize you were going to put that horriffic and absoluteley repulsive las pic of my deformed breast. Oh God I want to die. Ok, you can keep it IF you please, please, please delete the pic that shows my actual face so people don;t know that it's me and that I'm that totally repulsive. I know you won;t agree and I don;t need reassurance I just do NOT want people seeing my face any more. I am never getting naked again ever.

Svea: Oh my word, my dear, you're freaking out. I think all the photos are beautiful. I'd rather take off the last one than the first. Can I do that?

Carmen: yes. although from your point of view the last one shows the "scars" better. In that it shows how grotesque and deformed and stretched the skin is. but fine, if you take the last one out then i can deal with my face being attached to an embarassing story. bleh.

Svea: Well hey, I want you to feel good about it. It matters less to me than it does to you...
So I've taken the post down (it's saved, but as a draft). Think about what you want (which pictures, etc.), and just let me know in a few hours or at the end of the day or when you're ready... I just really love that portrait, but then maybe I could take other portrait photos of you that aren't 'scar' related. You are, after all, Ms. photogenic.
Let me know what you want. It's not empowering if you hate it! Well, that is, if you hate it and don't want it up!

December 15th:

Carmen: Hey Ms. Svea,
Hmmm...okay, much thinking. I've decided that you can keep the first two pieces, i.e. the one of my face/cleavage and the one where you just see my earings, cleavage, and the side of my face. Not the one I hate. If you like, you could also put the one where my hair just kind of dangles down?
I'm torn because if I were you, the artist, I would want to keep the one that shows the scars best. It works directly towards your theme, but isn;t as pleasant/pretty as the portrait. But the truth of the matter is that the portrait, though beautiful and...in a way showinbg some inner sadness...doesn't even show enough scars to make it...you know, matter?
"Like, why is this girl so obsessed with these half-invisible scars?? Get over yourself, lady." says the viewer that thinks like Carmen.
It's a tough call because I'm more prone to think as the artist, and I think that the work would be more successful with that last photo. But as the subject, I really can't handle disclosing so much of myself to the public. Even if no one I know sees it, I'll still know.
So, in closing (haha...oh I'm such a caffeine fiend at night and write these convoluted emails) you can put the first two photos and the one with my hair hanging down, but no close-up scars one.

Svea: Ok, sounds good. Why are you still up?
It's only midnight for me, but it's three for you!
You know, a lot of the scars [in the project] aren't all that visible... I think it's really interesting that way. They just are more important/meaningful (in both positive and negative ways) to us than they are to other people.

January 3rd:
Carmen: ok, so I'm very sorry to be a huge pain in the butt..but...could you take down the the pic that shows my face from the lifelines project? I know, I know..

Svea: Don't be sorry! It's fine. I want you to be comfortable with it... Can I put the other (more close-up one) up instead? Now that I don't have you face in it, you just might be more comfortable with that... >)
Also, it would be cool to put this correspondence in. You know, us negotiating the photos. Since no one can identify you now, would that be OK?
Carmen: Thanks dood. Yes, you can put the horrific "close up" up...everything is fine as long as my face isn;t there. Our correspondance is okay too.

This is Aaron


Aaron has a scar on the palm of his left hand. I photographed him in the Naam restaurant in Vancouver, B.C.