I Love My Body!

Today is Love Your Body Day!
I know because I just discovered Chloe Angyal’s wonderful blog post at feministing.com

Of course I wanted to participate in NOW’s LYBD “Blog Carnival” – who doesn’t LOVE a carnival! The pretty horses… the scary clowns!

This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival!

In our VB/CO virtual performance works we’ve thought about identity, body image, and other related topics:

• VB28 – The Seniors Project
• VB26 – Average
• VB19 – I Avatar
• VB15 – Gracie / Kris
• VB14 – Gingham
• VB08 – Two Wear My Skin
• Flashmob #3 – Starlight

I thought I’d say something about “I Love My Body Day”… or “I Love My virtual Body Day.”

Chloe’s post was so simple, beautiful, and powerful. She didn’t talk about media stereotypes or advertising imagery or beauty culture, she went right past all that and spoke about her own body in deeper, more powerful ways…

Chloe’s body can
• Heal itself
• Cary a small human being inside
• Dance
• Orgasm

As an avatar my body can’t really do some of the things that Chloe’s body can do. Considering all the sublime power that Chole’s body has I thought I might skip the Blog Carnival after all.

In the end I decided that wonderful as Chloe’s post is, I do still love my virtual body. As a performance artist in 3D virtual worlds, I love my body because it helps me to speak in so many ways.

In my virtual performance art work my body has been large and small, young and old, black and white. I have walked on two legs and rolled in a wheelchair. Wearing these different skins certainly doesn’t give me a complete, or even an especially deep appreciation of these multiple ways of being in our culture, still, it has been for me, and I hope for our audiences, at least an invitation to consider embodiment from deeper, richer, and more diverse perspectives.

I love my virtual body and all the contemplations on the myriad forms of humankind that it evokes.