Body Integrity Identity Disorder

To me Body Integrity Identity(BIID) is non-existent and I have never heard of this and in no way would I have ever thought that such an illness exists. How would one treat an individual with BIID you say, I believe the only way to treat such an illness where one has the urge to amputate a limb or even any body part for that matter is to handle it psychologically. There only other way I can think of is if their urge cannot be stopped then replace their body part with something technological like Body hacking or something of that sort. I can only assume that with the article's assertion that people with BIID are middle-class white men that it can be concluded that the illness is related to wealthy white men with the upbringings of a white-cultured family. Some people will definitely call this a utter waste of time spent or treatment when they are just looking for attention. If one of my friends told me that they wanted to amputate themselves, I would not believe them at all and take them for granted. If BIID and gender identity disorder(GID) have immediate parallels then what is different between these people and regular-deemed people. Now I can't help but wonder when I see someone amputated whether or not they are amputated because of a misfortunate event, an act of violence in war, or BIID. Now all these factors are out there which makes me wonder. If BIID is a illness that is barely advertised or spoken about, what else is out there. When I hear the fact that someone wants to be disable and deliberately disables themselves, it just makes me wonder, why? what goes on in their mind at that exact moment? do they think it's cool, the norm? What is it? I just don't understand. 
How can people live to the fullest knowing they could be running with the wind in their faces enjoying the breeze while they are sitting in a wheelchair amputated. I believe this is a form of potential suicide in itself because on the off chance that the amputation does not go as planned or goes horribly wrong then one will have to live knowing they deliberately killed that person for no reason, it just makes no sense. "Now, years later, Josh says he feels wonderful without his hand, that his amputation finally ended a “torment” that had plagued him since middle school. “It is a tremendous relief,” he told Newsweek. “I feel like my body is right.” This tells the story of a man who had BIID and felt the need to amputate his hand saying it just felt right that way. So my question is, how did it feel with the hand? I hope treatment for BIID is found and patients are well-treated because anybody born that way, I would say is "unfortunate" to feel that way and thats just my opinion. I feel as though we have all our body parts for a reason and with each body part comes a function that they serve. BIID is a illness I would not wish on even my greatest enemies. I believe i to be somewhat of a "curse".

Rough Draft

Edmund Adjei

Eng. 201

Greenlee Brown

Bodybuilding is one of the most versatile of all athletic activities. It can be used for a variety of purposes: getting stronger, improving looks, losing fat, strengthening weaknesses or preventing injuries. These bodies that countless bodybuilders create challenge the notion of health. In no way, do their bodies align with the notion of health. Nowadays, bodybuilders have achieved what was thought by many to be impossible. In my opinion, bodybuilding should only be taking to a certain extent, anything over, is putting your body at risk as well. In “Roxanne Edwards is Superhuman" by S. Adrian Massey III, the female bodybuilder Roxanne Edwards is referred to as superhuman. Things that weren’t even imagined to be possible are now standing within people in public. “Hard Bodies” by Stuart Ewen as well does well to depict the daily lifestyle of bodybuilders and what is going on in a bodybuilder’s mind. In “Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture” by Heather Cassils, the bodybuilder Heather Cassils is seen as an art and not a body when it argues “I documented my body as it changed, taking four photos a day, from four vantage points. I collapsed 23 weeks of training into 23 seconds, creating a time-lapse video”. This shows that bodybuilding is seen as the impossible, “the over-achieved”, an art, to the extent that they challenge the notion of health.

Health is defined as a person’s mental or physical condition or rather, the state of being free from illness or injury. Factors that are most important in clearly defining the state of health through exercising are now put at risk. Healthy kidneys, healthy lungs, etc. These are all highly essential to the human body, yet bodybuilders again and again put it at risk and take drugs such as steroids and countless other supplements all to maintain their image. At that point, they are not increasing their healthiness but rather endangering it. This then leads to the conclusion that not every bodybuilder’s reasoning and motivation is healthiness. There are countless of reasons for bodybuilders. Take Heather Cassils for example, the purpose of her indulging her body in such activities was pure experimentation. In “Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture” Heather Cassils mentions “I wanted this project to be a reflection of the value that is placed on the surface and what goes into constructing that surface. This is why I decided to take the steroids”. In essence she wanted to show people the whole concept of bodybuilding whether it be the consequences, the benefits, and etc. For Raymond H in “Hard Bodies” by Stuart Ewen his reasoning is straight-forward and simple. In “Hard Bodies” Ewen mentions what Raymond H. is trying to achieve “He is hoping to achieve the body he always wanted. Perhaps it is fitting that this quintessential, single, young, urban professional-whose life has become a circle of work, money culture, and the cultivation of an image-has turned himself, literally, into a piece of work.”. For the female bodybuilder Roxanne Edwards however, her reasoning is entirely different. In “Roxanne Edwards is Superhuman" by S. Adrian Massey III Roxanne goes ahead to state “What made me start working out is I wanted to look good naked. Now I look good naked. What makes you think that I’m gonna put clothes on it so that you can’t tell that I look good naked? Are you insane?”.

Growing up as a child, I always heard the saying “nothing comes easy in life”. I have come to see that this saying is true. For example, Roxanne Edwards had public repercussions once she began to get closer and closer to the body she wanted to achieve. In “Roxanne Edwards is Superhuman” Roxanne states “All I am is muscle and eyes and teeth and some abs. That’s it!”. She goes on to to say that she lost her breasts and it is now all muscle because women start off with their breasts as body fat. As Roxanne gets closer and closer to her end goal as a bodybuilder she begins to experience public repercussions such as not being categorized as a woman anymore. People begin to see her as a man and fear her when they see her in the street. With the photos taken of her on dismagazine, they depict her as out of place as if she doesn’t belong like a superhuman. She is neither seen as a woman nor a man however to her she is just expressing her femininity through her life or as Roxanne says in her interview, “femininity is not necessarily about the breast but how you be as a woman”.

Heather Cassils on the other hand experiences private repercussions. In “Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture” Heather Cassils states “It became difficult to sense my limits: what was too much weight? The muscles could handle it, but what about the stabilizing joints and tendons? This dysphoria spread to other parts of my life. I felt ungrounded and in flux -- like my inner compass was off. I also felt like shit. I was so tired all the time from all the heavy lifting. My joints ached constantly, and my muscles became so tight that my girlfriend had to take my t-shirt off at night because I was no longer flexible enough to do so myself.” At this point, one begins to ask themselves if it is even worth it anymore to continue on such a path. As Heather states in the article “Within the training I pushed past what I thought was humanly possible for my body and I reached new terrains of strength and power.”. Bodybuilders are pushing past the limits we thought humans had. They are challenging the whole notion of health, a concept thought to be completely understood by the world.

The relationship between a spectator like myself who looks at images of these people and the people themselves such as Roxanne Edwards and Heather Cassils is a strange relationship because it depends on the image or message that the bodybuilder is trying to send whether it is a motivational message or just showing it off to the world. When I first looked at Roxanne Edwards images of her body, I was shocked. Society has made it so that a woman having such a masculine body is not acceptable which is the root of my amazement. I imagine other spectators are frightened by the bodies created by these people because nobody thought it to be humanly possible. In “Hard Bodies” Ewen goes ahead to say that, “Health clubs thus can be seen as factories that produce the sorts of bodily objects that America values, with Nautilus machines standing in as the tools of mass production.” Bodybuilding at the stages of Roxanne Edwards, Heather Cassils, and etc are no longer aligned with the notions of health but have rather challenged the concept of health and as Ewen states are now building “bodily objects”.

Roxanne Edwards: Life as a female bodybuilder

          What I find intriguing about this interview is the fact that there are not an abundance of female bodybuilders out there and for her to take a stand and become a bodybuilder is brave. During the interview, she stated that she lost her breasts due to the fact that breasts on females are body fat that can be eventually ridden of if it was turned into pure muscle and that is what Roxanne Edwards did. She also stated that she personally doesn't use creatine and that sometimes the effects of it are not as good as advertised however, that it can be used for recovery and that humans naturally have creatine in their body. This is alarming coming from a bodybuilder seeing as I myself use creatine. As a matter of fact, I just started using it literally the same day before I listened to the interview. 

          Another thing that stuck out to me was the fact that Roxanne Edwards had everything opposite to what discussed in class as to what represents a perfect female and what represents a perfect male. If I were to base it off of what we discussed in class as to what represents a perfect female then there is only one realization that comes to the mind. What does society see her as? A man?, because she has nearly every physicality of a male. Muscular and toned being the strongest factor or rather pillar which is what she has exactly. Society starts to see a female such as this as a female with male attributes therefore making her a male in the eyes of some. In this interview, Roxanne Edwards speaks about her life as a bodybuilder. 

          Roxanne has achieved what she has wanted, which is a body of "pure muscle" and no fat at all considering the fact that she doesn't possess breast. In all honesty, I don't consider what Roxanne Edwards possess as in her body as whole as a healthy body because there are a lot of veins all over the place to the extent that it looks in a sense, "crazy". If anything, it looks anything but healthy. There is the extreme extent and the limited or rather decent body. As said in the discussion we had in class, a female's body and male's body cannot have extreme muscular figures especially in females because society has them pegged to be "feminine" or rather all hips, curves, large buttocks, big breasts, flat stomach. 

          I totally support what Roxanne is trying to achieve and support her bravery because I haven't seen that many female bodybuilders in my life or at least, to that extent. "I know some very unique looking women, all across the spectrum, and when I say unique looking women I mean unique women period. Drag queens, transvestites, body builders, you name it, the whole gamut and they are quite elegant and just amazingly feminine without having to have not one breast amongst them." I resonate with this quote greatly not because I'm going through the same experience but because being unique is not a bad thing. People are not used to seeing something different so therefore, they judge and I in a sense feel as though I am different and unique as I'm sure there are others out there who are unique in their own way. My message to transvestites, bodybuilders, and drag queens is "keep being unique!"