From Charlotte: Two years ago I taped some paper down on my living room floor, got naked, and painted my whole body. My friend Gabi was with me taking pictures. I had no idea what it would look like. I just had to know how it felt. It didn’t take me long to realize this was something I loved and the first words out of Gabi’s mouth were, “you have to paint me next.”
Since then I have painted about 15 people. Due to the intimate nature of the experience, I generally paint people who reach out to me. Suzanne is one of the first people I approached because I really wanted to paint her. Here is a little piece of Suzanne’s story and some of the photos from our session.
What has your relationship with your body been like over the years?
That’s a big question. Hmm. Well, I was a very happy and active kid. I remember liking my body. I liked that it was slender, flexible, fast, and athletic. I thought I had a cute face, silky hair, and smooth skin. I liked my double-jointed fingers and my dexterous feet. I always had tons of energy and an adventurous spirit. I’m a Navy brat and my family moved around a lot, so I was always the new kid in school. Because the teachers placed me by intelligence level rather than age, I ended up skipping two grades. By the time I got to junior high school, I was two years younger than all of my classmates. During puberty when I started having crushes on boys, I was short, smart, and flat-chested, and the boys I liked weren’t interested in me. I remember there was a Sadie Hawkins dance (where the girls ask the boys) – I asked 5 different boys to go with me, and every one of them turned me down. I was devastated. I assumed that I wasn’t pretty enough for boys to like me, and boys were the only thing that mattered to me at the time. Also, I started getting teased mercilessly for being Asian, and kids would slant their eyes and buck their teeth at me. They would shout things like “Ching Chong Wing Wong!” or “Wing Wang Orangutang!” and point and laugh at me. It was soul-crushing and bewildering. Once when I was eight years old, I was riding my bicycle in a residential neighborhood and a group of boys chased me on their bicycles, throwing rocks at me and calling me “chink”. I was afraid for my life, so I jumped off my bicycle and ran up the stairs to the front door of a stranger’s house, banged on it, and begged for help. A man answered the door, I cried as I told him the boys were throwing rocks at me, and he shouted at them to leave me alone. They turned and sped away. So my body wasn’t a safe place for me to inhabit anymore, and I think I put up a wall of armor.
When I got to high school, all the popular girls were white and blonde, with blue eyes and big boobs. They wore lots of makeup, they were dumb as a bag of hammers, and they were cheerleaders. I wished I were a dumb white cheerleader, and I kept waiting for my boobs to get bigger. They never did. My body became a big disappointment to me when it came to boys. I still excelled at gymnastics and tennis, and I got the Presidential Award patch, but I longed to be desired by boys.
It wasn’t until my freshman year at Yale that I started to love my body again. Suddenly, it was okay to be Asian – in fact, it was seen as exotic. It was okay to have small boobs – these guys weren’t as superficial as the rednecks in Virginia. In fact, some guys preferred a petite physique, saying, “Who needs more than a handful?” At this college, not only was it okay to be smart, it was SEXY to be smart. And I started wearing makeup. I went from famine to feast in the men department, and I was on top of the world again.
I continued loving my body all through graduate school, and then I moved to Boston and became a model and an actress. My first claim to fame was as a television host, and I was named one of People Magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People in 2006. But being famous is bizarre. One minute I’m glorified, and the next minute I’m being called “anorexic” on the Internet. I have a slender figure, and a fast metabolism. I eat everything in sight. I just don’t gain weight. Doctors always told me how strong and healthy I was when I got my annual checkups. But gossip is ubiquitous in America. Luckily, I was raised by two wonderful parents who kissed and hugged me every day of my childhood, told me that I’m smart and beautiful and talented and wonderful, that they love me unconditionally, and that I can accomplish anything I want. I believed them. So gossip from strangers doesn’t derail me the way it might for people who become famous in order to fill a hole inside of them. It may hurt my feelings temporarily, but it doesn’t destroy me.
Later that same year that I was glorified in People Magazine, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I’ve had breast cancer 3 times in the last 10 years, because like most Asians, I am an overachiever. The third time, it metastasized to Stage 4, which is the worst stage. There is no Stage 5. Fuck. I became convinced that God was a cunt, or at the very least, out to lunch.
I had two breast surgeries, back surgery, hip replacement surgery, 6 weeks of radiation and 6 weeks of chemo. I needed to take better care of myself, so I changed what I eat, drink, and think, and started meditating and getting acupuncture. I found a phenomenal holistic chiropractor/kinesiologist. Since we are only as sick as our secrets, and I had kept the cancer a secret for the first 5 years, I finally decided to come out of the cancer closet. I learned the importance of slowing down, staying still, and asking for help and love. It was hard to throw pride and ego out the window, but I did it, and I began to receive a tsunami of love and support. I was... quite literally... LOVED back to life. I made cancer my bitch, fisted it in the ass, and I am now completely cancer-free.
Every woman I know who has or had breast cancer has spent much of her life taking care of everyone else, at her own expense. She has been a superhero, or a martyr, saving and rescuing and fixing and helping everyone except herself. I definitely fit this profile. Before I got cancer, I would often sleep only 3 hours a night, I ate junk food, I never drank water, I never meditated, and I said yes to everyone when I sometimes meant no. I was trying to be all things to all people. I would do this until I collapsed and got a cold or the flu and would hibernate till I got better. This went on for decades. I wasn’t getting the lesson, and apparently I’m so stubborn that it took stage 4 cancer to wake me up.
One of my surgeries was a lumpectomy to remove a grapefruit-sized tumor from my left breast. The incision got infected, leaving a giant crater filled with black necrotic tissue. I needed an emergency procedure in the surgeon’s office where she had to cut out the infected tissue with scissors. There was no time for anesthesia, so I just screamed in pain. To heal the crater, a nurse would come to my house every morning and place saline-soaked gauze inside the crater. Eight hours later she would come back to… that’s right… rip out the dry gauze, removing the dead tissue and encouraging the growth of healthy new tissue. There’s some pain that’s beyond screaming or wailing – just a single tear would silently crawl down my face. After a few weeks of this agony, I learned about Extracellular Matrix Powder made out of pig bladders, which regrows human tissue. It turns out that a pig’s genetic structure is closer to humans than any other animal. I decided to try it, and… it worked! The only side effect is, my left tit oinks now.
I did not get reconstructive plastic surgery to “fix” my left breast, because I decided it looks beautiful just the way it is, all asymmetrical and scarred and bizarre, with some magically regrown tissue and skin. I have redefined femininity and beauty for myself. My sitcom will be called “One and a Half Tits.” I smell Emmy!
In the 1950’s, Marilyn Monroe was the ideal woman, and voluptuous was desirable. In the 1960’s, the new ideal was skinny, and Twiggy was the popular model. Women starved themselves. And more recently, Jennifer Lopez has made big butts hot again. And what about lipstick color? Is it bright red, or nude lips right now?
It’s all so arbitrary and preposterous, constantly jumping through hoops and punishing, poisoning or plasticizing ourselves to be considered “beautiful” by our society. It’s exhausting to fit into an ever-changing definition of what is beautiful. True beauty shines through from within. I remember seeing Etta James perform live in concert many years ago. She probably weighed 300 pounds. She strutted onto the stage like she thought she was the sexiest woman alive, and while she sang, she turned her backside to the audience and slowly gyrated to the music. The crowd went wild. We teach people how to perceive us, by the way we feel about ourselves.
I am so happy that I have had this wild experience with cancer, which made me hate my body, fight with my body, criticize my body, and then start accepting and loving and cherishing my body again. I am grateful to be alive, ambulatory, and pain-free. Every day feels like a bonus round to me. God is back from lunch.
I’m healthier and happier than I ever was before I got cancer. I don’t just BELIEVE in miracles, I AM one. I’m 53 years young, and the best is yet to come.
Have you ever stopped yourself from doing something you wanted to do because of the way you thought you looked that day?
I postponed my body joy painting shoot multiple times because I was nervous about feeling exposed and hating the photos.
What was it like for you being painted by me? How did it feel?
Being painted by you was a rollercoaster experience. I was grumpy and resistant and sad when I arrived, but after talking through it with you and Gabi, and doing a visualization about my intention, I felt much better. I had been nude in front of a photographer before, but having you touch my nude body with paint on your fingers, when I don’t know you very well, seemed like a much bigger deal. It helped to see other Body Joy photos, and to know the mission of this art project. The hardest part was the time gap between when I took off my robe, and when you first put some paint on me. That felt like an eternity. But once the painting began, I became fascinated with the visual and tactile experience and forgot that I was nude. You and Gabi are such loving people, and I felt safe with you both. It was an artistic ménage-a-trois!
The paint was much colder than I thought it would be… I wish it could have been warmed up. But it was astonishing to watch you paint me. You are an incredibly gifted visual artist, and you just happened to pick all my favorite colors. It was a multidimensional experience, because I was simultaneously the subject of a photo shoot, the 3D canvas for a painting, and an ever-changing sculpture. I also became the artist, when you allowed me to use my own fingers and fingernails to manipulate the paint on my body.
I loved the variety of ways you put the paint on my body – pouring it, throwing it, smearing it, splattering it – and it was ever-evolving. And as Gabi showed me some of the photos she had taken, I LOVED them. Each photograph seemed like a standalone work of art, not a mere documentation of a work in progress. Once my body was covered with paint, I didn’t feel nude at all. I felt completely clothed. And I never left my body – I stayed present the entire time. Yay!!! When we were done, I was sad that it was over. The time had flown by. I wanted to walk around outside and let people see how amazing I looked. Maybe stroll into a nearby restaurant and ask for a table. Would that have been illegal?
It was also a wild visual and tactile experience to take a shower afterwards. You encouraged me to take my time, and you said that it would take quite a while to get all the paint out of my hair and body. I wish there had been a video camera inside the shower. It was an eyegasm. The multicolored splatter on the shower walls looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. The psychedelic blending of colors, swirling down my body and slowly down the shower drain, was breathtaking to behold. I became a living lava lamp. It was an incredibly sensual experience, and after I finally emerged from the shower, I felt reborn.
What about after: To see your body painted? To see the photos?
I loved seeing my body painted – it was a visual smorgasbord. Seeing the photos was a jaw-dropping experience, and showing them to my boyfriend was thrilling.
Did you still feel like yourself?
I felt even more like myself, as if I had a new level of appreciation and awareness of my body that was unlocked from this experience.
What was it like having your scars covered in paint?
Because I have come to love my scars, I think in retrospect I would have preferred that my scars had been left completely exposed, but that would have inhibited the freedom and spontaneity of your painting process. I’m very happy with the images, and I’m excited to share them with the world!
If anyone who is reading this is dealing with cancer or any other major challenge, please know that it’s possible for you to reclaim your health and happiness. And if you have any sort of judgment or insecurity about any part of your body, I hope my story will help you embrace your scars, asymmetries and imperfections. We are ALL gorgeous, exactly the way we are.
Body Painting by: Charlotte Dean
Photo credit: Gabriela Ayala
