BME: Body Modification Ezine

As part of an ongoing investigation into private rituals and public spaces, this article will consider the growing interest in Live Art in which the artists use their own bodies as the site of inquiry. Social taboos such as bloodletting, self-flagellation and body modification will be considered, alongside the objections to this particular practice.Live Art has its history in the performance art practice of the 1970′s. Informed by the work of such artists as the Viennese Aktionists, Coum Transmissions and Chris Burden, the artists who engage in this particular practice choose to use their own bodies, pushing the boundaries of social taboo. Creating more of an interrogation than a dialogue, the spectator is forced into making choices about questions of identity and difference and the nature of mortality.

In order to negotiate these particular practices has proved problematic, as the performances now only exist in a fragmentary way within photographs and videos. Of course, this documentation is not the performance itself. A photograph or video is a snapshot of time and cannot be totally representative. In an age of mass information overload, where we have become de-conditioned to atrocities committed in the name of politics, global terrorism and famine, the ‘news’ documentation played back on radio and television does not tell the real story. We are conditioned to objectify violations of the body and remove ourselves from immersion in such actions and feelings. The curators (journalists and TV news presenters) of this spectacle manipulate our points of view, numbing us to the reality of events happening in distant countries to ‘the other’.

The use of blood within Live Art forces the viewer into re-considering their own bodily vulnerability and to question issues of gender roles. As Live Artists use their own bodies as a site for inquiry, there is an immediacy of similarity between the viewers and viewed, which does not require any academic training to understand. As such, immediate actions onto the body have generated a discourse that reaches beyond the confines of the Fine Art arena. Press interest has created a reputation for these artists that places them as ‘the other’ onto which we can project our own fears about bodily invasion and destruction, where we can directly experience such violent actions by attending a performance, not constructed and removed from reality in the manner television forces us to.

Artists such as Franko B and Ron Athey provoke such a discourse, but one that is fuelled by reputation rather than experience. A sense of control, which could easily lapse into chaos, is the constant concern of such direct actions onto the body. With the disneyfication of difference so prevalent within Western culture, these artists are seeking to re-address the balance and re-affirm their own identities, using taboos such as blood, nakedness and socially sanctioned ‘self-harm’ to explore their own bodies. Traditional Fine Art notions of ‘the space’ and ‘the body’ become ‘this space’ and ‘this body’.

 

Ron Athey’s practice is informed by his years of heroin addiction, a fundamentalist pentecostal upbringing, his mother being an institutionalised schizophrenic and ultimately his diagnosis of HIV fifteen years ago. His performances seek to negotiate his relationship to these events, creating a theatre of spectacle in which the viewer is implicated. His use of religious tableau to address these issues further enhances notions of social taboo and stigma. Disussing the idea of theatre and performance as cathartic methods of expression, Athey states,

 

"Like the plague, the theatre is the time of evil, the triumph of dark powers that are nourished by a power even more profound until extinction...The theatre like the plague, is in the image of this carnage and this essential separation. It releases conflicts, disengages powers, liberates possibilities, and if these possibilities and these powers are dark, it is the fault not of the plague nor of the theatre, but of life".

(Exposures, 2002, pg 6)

In “Four Scenes from a Harsh Life” he inserts 30 hypodermic needles into his arm, referencing his time as an intravenous drug user. He then, with the help of his ‘medical’ staff, inserts a crown of ‘thorns’ (hypodermic needles again), enacting Christ’s death. As he collapses on the floor, his assistants cover him with a white shroud and he is carried to the centre of the stage. After a short while he is cleansed with water and is ‘resurrected’.

During “Nurses’ Penance,” he re-creates the institutional terror of a hospital setting, with a patient brutalized by huge drag-queen nurses with sewn-together lips. In another piece he’s writhing naked, on one end of a double-headed dildo. His richest source for material, though, is the church. Most of his pieces have religious names like ‘Martyrs and Saints’ and ‘Deliverance’, along with characters like St. Sebastian, who’s martyred with a literal crown of thorns that causes blood to rain onto his face and the floor. Much of his work is driven by a sense of martyrdom and, arguably, a self-hate instilled on him from childhood.

Athey attracted international attention in 1994, after a Minneapolis performance in which he sliced into the back of a fellow performance artist, placed strips of paper towel over the wounds and then hoisted the bloodied strips of paper towel, via pulley, over the heads of the audience. Though no blood dripped down onto the audience, and though the performer who was cut was HIV negative, Athey’s own HIV positive status led one audience member to claim that the crowd had been spattered with HIV-positive blood.

Within these performances, the spectator is forced into a position of passive voyeurism. The audience act as conduits for this dialogue that is critical to Athey’s performances. Whilst Athey maintains the power, the audience are left helpless as he metamorphoses himself, through methods of live body modification. Although Athey presents himself to us as an artist, he is also allowing us to observe a process of healing and catharsis. Though Athey does not use documentation in a way that is representative (ie he doesn’t exhibit this work in a gallery), videos of his work provide us with a snapshot of the experience of his performances. His use of theatre to present the ‘real’, adds further signifiers to his work. Referencing notions of catholic ritual and linking this to the idea of Christ as drug taker (although by inference) he opens up a discourse on the nature of religion and its use of ritual.

The use of blood in Franko B’s performances operates as a different signifier. Franko B is not HIV+ and he uses blood as an affirmation of life. His short pieces involve cutting, scarification and other apparent S/M practices. The direct use of his body in these performances removes any notions of ‘representation’. In order to fully experience Franko B, one has to be present as part of a complete visual, physical and emotional immersion in the work.

His performances such as ‘I Miss You’, when he walks down a canvas in a room set up like a fashion show, with photographers situated at one end, to heighten the sense of voyeurism, seek to implicate the viewer further. ‘Oh Lover Boy’ sites Franko as an ‘artists model’. To quote from Gray Watsons interview with Franko B,

 

"Oh Lover Boy is going to be a performance piece where again, the body is presented: it's there on the table. It is there for you to take, in a way, either to draw or to look at...the set-up is going to be almost like a life-drawing class but there is also a clinical side, where it is like you are looking at a body. But it is not passive; it is not a dead body, in a way it's giving life by bleeding. And he's looking at you".

(Gray Watson, 2000)

Franko’s performances reference his childhood being brought up by the Red Cross. Using a diatribe of medical equipment such a syringes, drip stands and wheel chairs, Franko re-enforces notions of healing, but also control, amidst the perceived chaos of his performances. He can only perform three times a year because of the amount of healing that needs to take place after his performances.

Franko’s other work, (which is regularly exhibited, unlike Ron Athey’s documentation) consists of collages and installations. His collage work, references his ‘real’ experiences, and documents his whole life. This again raises issues of vulnerability, as he is leaving nothing to the imagination. Flyers from his performances and pictures of ‘boys I went out with’ (Gray Watson, 2000) mingle with images of religious artefacts and blood stained sheets from his performances.

Issues of power arise here, as the viewer is implicated in the performance by default. Franko appears as helpless and vulnerable, but also has power over his audience. If Franko performed in the street, the context would be different and issues of legality would be raised. This issue of contextualisation also raises issues of safety and notions of control and chaos.

Both Ron Athey and Franko B have ‘medical’ helpers during their performances. They act as signifiers within the performance, to connote to the viewer notions of control and safety. This safety angle is always printed on the flyers, to reassure the viewer. There is a paradox here, as the people that are supposed to ‘help’ during Franko B’s performance, also cut him with a razor during ‘Oh Lover Boy’. The medical helpers are in fact trained body-piercers, with basic anatomy training. As soon as this fact has been established during the performance, these signifiers change.

Both Athey and Franko B as gay men question the nature of masculinity. At their performances, it is the men who recoil against the walls of the venue, normally in foetal positions, returning to maternal signifiers as if about to be castrated. The spilling of blood, whatever the connotation intended by the artist, has the effect of rendering the audience impotent, either to their own bodies or to the performance itself. They cannot help the performers, even though they feel their natural reaction is to do so.

There is also a sense that the performers are acting ‘privately’ and the viewer is intruding into a sacred shamanic ritual. Shamanism is normally associated with women, blood letting during menstruation being an important part of ‘walking with the spirits’. Although, shamans tend to operate outside the confines of accepted social practice, they act as a conduit to ‘other-worldly’ access and are relied upon by the rest of the tribe to maintain a sense of unity. Within the framework of Live Art, the performers provide this access so that the viewers themselves can reach the dark underworld of the shaman. Within Western culture, it appears that men are not supposed to reveal their feelings, let alone share any intimate details about themselves with the outside world. By the direct action onto their bodies and the use of blood, Franko and Athey challenge this notion.

The letting of blood is seen as ‘unclean’. This mythology probably originated in the Old Testament where it is seen that,

 

"She is to be 'put apart for her uncleanness' for seven days".

(Lev. 18:19)

"Any man who lies with her during this time is also unclean for seven days, anyone who touches her is unclean till the evening, and everything that she sitteth upon shall be unclean".

(Lev. 15:19-24)

Throughout the history of art we have encountered images of blood from the earliest cave paintings through centuries of biblical images and through to war films such as Apocalypse Now. It both fascinates us and repulses us. It has come to represent both the sacred and profane. Live Artists use this dichotomy as a way of personal transformation. At the performances there is a sense of sacredness that transcends orthodox religious methods. This could explain why the Christian Church is opposed to such direct actions onto the body. It appals them that something non-religious can actually achieve the same transcendental experience that religion is supposed to offer. In Judaeo-Christian cultures, blood ‘sacrifice’ cannot be culturally sanctioned because of notions of idolatry, where the artist are using their own bodies to ‘redeem’ themselves as opposed to appeals to God.

In his book ‘Violence and the Sacred’, Rene Girards’ theory of sacrifice states,

"The physical metamorphoses of spilt blood can stand for the double nature of violence...Blood serves to illustrate that the same substance can stain or cleanse, contaminate or purify, drive men to fury and murder or appease their anger and restore them to life"

(Girard, 1972)

The process of purification that the artists are trying to achieve can sometimes fail, not providing the audience with the signifier of life that blood performances seek to inform the viewer about. The aforementioned performance by Ron Athey called ‘Martyrs and Saints’ which used supposed HIV blood being heaved across the heads of the audience on a pulley system created an outcry. This could be because the blood was seen as ‘polluted’, making the ‘artist an unacceptable surrogate sacrificial victim for a healthy community’ (Dawn Perlmutter, 2000). In a sense, the signifier contained within the blood changed its meaning and the ritual which was meant to be a demonstration of transcendence through bodily mutilation failed. The distance between the observer and observed was very wide and the artists role as shaman became disjointed, hence the public outcry. The success of such actions is dependent on the audience feeling close to the Live Artists performance.

 

The antagonism towards Live Art does not detract from the fact that Live Art is a growing method of expression. It could be seen as an attempt to disrupt societal and personal boundaries through methods of physical sacrifice and as a process of purification. Although sometimes the ritual, as in Athey’s case, can fail, it is still a ritual which people observe. With the growth of interest in body piercing and tattooing due largely to information being disseminated via the internet, what was once the reserve of underground S/M clubs has now become an overground method of artistic practice. There is an obvious need for people to get back in touch with their own bodies as the site of inquiry, as is evidenced by the recent series of events at the Tate Modern, running over the course of a weekend at the end of March this year called ‘Live Culture’. This exhibition brought together Live Artists from various schools, to inform, perform and debate. Depending on audience interest, the movement will continue to undermine social convention and will move away from the purely aesthetic and personal transformation on the part of the artists, into the realms of communal transformation.

Jason Oliver
May 2003

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References

• Girard, R (1972). Violence and the Sacred. trans. Patrick Gregory. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press.
• Perlmutter, D. (2000). The Sacrificial Aesthetic: Blood Rituals from Art to Murder.
• Revised English Bible. (1989). Bath Press: Avon.
• V, Manuel, Keidan,L and Athey, R. (2002). Exposures. Black Dog Publishing: London.
• Watson, G. (2000). interview with Franko B:1st May 2003.

Bibliography

• Danto, Arthur C (1986). The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art. Columbia University Press: New York.
• Eliade, M (1987). The Encyclopedia of Religion. Macmillan Publishing Co: New York.
• Stuart, H (1997). Representation, Cultural Represenations and Signifying Practices. Bath Press Colourbooks: Glasgow.
• Keidan, L, Morgan, S and Sinclair, S. (1998). Franko B. Black Dog Publishing: London.
• V, Manuel, Watson, G and Wilson, S. (2001). Franko B – Oh Lover Boy. Black Dog Publishing: London.
• V,Vale and Juno, A. (1989). Modern Primitives, An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual: Re/Search Publications: San Francisco, CA.
• Wollheim, R. (1980). Art And Its Objects. University Press: Cambridge.

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As part of his thesis on the ‘Body as Transformative Object’ Jason is looking for people involved with the body modification community who class themselves as artists. These can be either people who modify others, or who are modified themselves, surgically or otherwise, performers, suspension crews, or any others who see what they do as an art form. I am particularly interested in people that push boundaries that little bit further.

I am looking for people who are willing to take an email-based interview on their motivations, their experiences and why they see their modifications as an art form.

The thesis will be written over the period September-December of this year. All artists interviewed will be fully credited and a copy of the thesis will be given to all those taking part. Contact coldcell for further details.

Jason Oliver is currently working on his BA (Hons) Graphic Fine Art course in London, UK. His main areas of concern are ritual, body modification, and performances linking the two. He is researching social taboos and the general public’s response to direct actions onto the body and has a special interest in the use of blood, both in art and in ‘tribal’ rituals and how it acts as different signifiers depending on cultural context.

He is an active opponent to cultural appropriation of body ritual, finding it both undermining and patronising but instead explores the role that modification plays to himself personally, without cultural references, by pushing his body into new areas of experience, with documentation being a pre-requisite.

This article was written as a precursor to his thesis, currently entitled ‘The Body as Transformative Object’. You can find Jason on IAM as coldcell.

Copyright © 2003 Jason Oliver and BMEZINE.COM. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published online August 20th, 2003 by BMEZINE.COM in Tweed, Ontario, Canada.

Counterpoint by Blake of Nomad

"A ritual can be described as the enactment of a myth. By participating in a good, sound ritual, you are actually experiencing a mythological life, and it's out of this that one can learn to live spiritually."

– Joseph Campbell

The myth of the Modern Primitive — a term coined by Fakir Musafar some twenty years ago when the body modification movement was in its infancy — is now applied broadly to anyone whose personal modification can be traced to an existing (or once existing) ancient or primitive culture; a tribal tattoo or a stretched earlobe for example.

Emulation or idolization, as Shannon suggests, can imply a mindless “because-it’s-cool” mentality — one based merely on aesthetic admiration. While anyone who can see must respect a Polynesian tattooed full body suit or the lobes of an elder Dayak, I suggest that the inclination toward tribal body modification transcends cultural barriers.

To refer to primitive cultures in general as “brutal and repressive” (does our own regime not brutally repress other societies around the world?) is to ignore the fact that these cultures, despite their “unsophisticated sociological moral structures” (a Western judgment according to Eurocentric ideals) prevailed for, in many cases, thousands of years. The reign of our Western society, a mere two centuries, is a drop in the bucket of time when compared with, for example, Egyptian dynasties that lasted over 3,000 years, did not destroy their environment, and left a legacy of architecture, high culture, art, jewelry, and demonstrated mastery over geometry. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that the labor force that constructed the great pyramids was well cared for — after all, a hungry worker gets little done. A vast network of modest domiciles, marketplaces, shops, even brothels and wine cellars tell us that although people died, the Pharaoh’s workforce was well organized, well rested, and drank, ate, and got laid.

The success of any civilization historically has depended on a social hierarchy, political or military infrastructure, and a spiritual, ritualistic, or religious dogma enacted by those “closest to the Gods”. Traditionally, tattoos and piercings were incorporates of that spiritual and social fabric. In Egyptian culture (the example I am using here), contrary to what Shannon suggests, it was primarily the upper-class who were tattooed and pierced.

The propaganda, mind control, and military threat utilized by the Nazi party affected societal control in a way much different than Aztec priests offering human sacrifice. Although prisoners of war were sacrificed, there was also an entire order of people who were offered consensually. In fact, these people were revered and considered it a high honor to have their blood and themselves offered to the Gods. Today, our own government utilizes many of Hitler’s principals of power (military threat, economic sanctions, propaganda, etc.) but “human sacrifice” no longer has the context of ritual and the spirit world. War is brutally and arbitrarily effected with technology and sophisticated weaponry (war is a timeless human motif; ancient or contemporary)… we need not even look our enemy in the eye.

I believe today’s “Modern Primitive” rarely supposes these “rituals (profound) and modifications (beautiful)” to be true expressions to aspire to of the romanticized “noble savage”. Rather, the primary reasoning for modern people to modify their bodies in a primitive fashion has more to do with aesthetics than rituals; an innate genetic predisposition of all humans. Modern people have the same human inclination as the primitive tribesman.

Author’s Note A reminder that Anglo-Europeans also have a tribal heritage. Although we have been disassociated from it for over a thousand years, it is still our history as well. I am a self-educated anthropologist, and piercer primarily of Italian descent. The oldest human mummy known to science and archaeology is a bronze-age man found on the Italian side of the Swiss Alps. He had over seventy black “tribal” tattoos, corresponding to chinese meridian points (acupuncture) and a healthy pair of 5/8″ stretched earlobes! DNA profiling found that he had living relatives in Italy today. That’s my people! Not the mindless caveman you’d think for 6,000 years ago! More on that in my book (scroll down to the bottom for more information).

It is our societal context, lack of ritualistic format, and our disassociation from our own tribal past that is the difference. With self-education and practice we can rediscover these things.

It is more than curious to me that cultures separated by time and geography practiced nearly identical forms of body modification. In fact, the stretched earlobe is the single most prevalent and occurring form of body modification in human history (I will spare the reader by not listing those cultures here). This suggests a deeper intuition that transcends race and culture. The act of “taking control”, as Shannon suggests, is in fact a human necessity.

I don’t think it is possible to presuppose or describe simply people’s motivation to self-decorate and modify. In a society nearly devoid of ritual, the 18th birthday navel piercing and mini-tribal tattoo is a modern Western-derived rite of passage. It is not one handed down by our elders, but a newly reinvented one (because tribal drives are still buried inside the genetic memory of the suburban American girl), and one with valuable social and even spiritual potential.

Spirituality is very much about transcendence (of fear of pain, of social stigmas, and so on) and in any capacity is a deeply personal experience (even if we cannot articulate its meaning)… if it happens at all.

It is an ironic juxtaposition indeed that the “underground subculture of the Modern Primitive” is a “system (self)sustaining” within mainstream society. This society whose premise of conformity and normality omit modifying the body altogether as social necessity — one of conformity and “sustaining the group” above all else — is the mainstream of unmodified individuals! The evolution of the individual, I agree, must again take precedence over that of sustaining the society because as a society, we are fractured and subdivided (the tribal connection to our collective human past has the potential to bond all of us together). Individual freethinkers must again step into the limelight of humanity to save us from ourselves.

With any mass-produced cultural product (religion, pop music, body jewelry, or a government-engineered ignorant society) the potential for transformative experience is reduced to a simple mathematical equation — percent and ratio. There will always be a few fortunate individuals within the group who will delve deeper and due to early conditioning, personal experiences, acquired knowledge, and individual constitution gain far more than the “mindless masses” from their transformations. The “thick fog of fashion” pervades every aspect of adornment, regardless of time in history or civilization. Our own ignorance (culturally and collectively) is ultimately all that will damage body modifications’s ability to enlighten. Again it comes down to the individual.

Fuck the group. Know yourself and then relate to those who are like-minded and God forbid a few of you hang out and become a group… at least in “my group” everyone designed their own tattoos….

In a global society another strange juxtaposition of culture has occurred. Many tribal people now emulate and idolize tattoos of the West. On a trip through the rain forests of Central America with my wife two years ago, in the middle of nowhere, at a small stand by the side of the road, we got out to stretch our legs. Several heavily tattooed midgets of mixed Spanish-Mayan descent came out of the woodwork to check me out. They were covered with images of Elvis, skulls and crossbones, daggers, pinup girls and WWII airplanes. And there I was with my “tribal” body suit (all of my designs derived from dreams and vision quests marking significant times of my life). We checked each other out, shook hands and smiled a lot… a certain unspoken understanding had transpired. In an age of cross-cultural-trans-global-sociological influence, who was emulating and idolizing who? It no longer matters.

I AM GOD

 Be God, create beyond yourself
reject the placebos of everyone else
wash and melt from your unconscious, slumbering mind
and depart from the life-eating lull of the grind.
Smash and remake
rebuild and design
unlearn from the core
then extend to outside
your chosen, ethereal, and leaving you blind
id-image-synaptic
as seen through your eyes.

…..BLAKE

PS. Shannon’s thoughts on corporations and craftsmen I am in agreement with, as well as his advice on the ways one might obtain a meaningful tattoo (avoiding fllash). If you want the same tattoo every Joe has — you know, that one on the wall — why bother? However, if that Tasmanian Devil has deep personal meaning for you, then you did choose the right tattoo.

Blake’s book, A Brief History of the Evolution of Body Adornment in Western Culture: Ancient Origins and Today is available from his website, nomadmuseum.com, and will be added to the media section of BMEshop shortly for online ordering. Fakir Musafar writes that this 150-page oversize book is a “must have” for all serious modifiers.

The grandson of dental surgeon, noted socialite, and traveller Dr. Naomi Coval, Blake Andrew Perlingieri was inspired by his grandmother’s travels to remote tribal areas in the early to middle parts of the 20th century.

Professionally, Blake began his carreer in 1990 at San Francisco’s premier piercing studio, Body Manipulations. At this time the only other studio was Gauntlet, L.A.. In 1993, Blake and his former partner, Kristian White, opened Nomad, the first tribal studio in the industry. Blake and Nomad have been featured numerous times in Fakir’s Body Play and all of the early publications and TV media of the day. In 1995, Nomad opened Australia’s first piercing studio in Melbourne. From 1996 to 1998 Blake brought his tribal gospel to the east coast and operated Venus with Maria.

In 1998, Blake returned west to open as sole proprietor Nomad Precision Body Adornment and Tribal Art Museum. Combining his famous jewelry collection with his recently inherited grandmother’s tribal art, Blake seeks to educate the children of the future, raise awareness about endangered tribes, and provide a cultural and educational context to body adornment for modern people.

The photo on the right was taken by Fakir Musafar.

Copyright © 2003 BMEZINE.COM. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published July 27, 2003 by BMEZINE.COM in Tweed, Ontario, Canada.

“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger

Not a day has gone by in the past year that I haven’t been grossed out by my physical appearance. It’s one thing to be a short man in this world… it’s entirely another to be a short, fat man, and I felt like I was on a sinking ship. My sedentary lifestyle, combined with my eating habits and busy schedule had taken their toll on my body, and I decided this spring that I would make no more excuses and get into shape. This was no longer a matter of desire to look and feel better, but a need to change my lifestyle. As many of you can appreciate, feeling uncomfortable in your own skin is one of the worst feelings you can have.

In my last column, I declared my intention for this series of articles — partly to document my own progress and process of physical training. This column will concern itself with giving you my background (why I’m doing what I’m doing), and lay bare my semi-nude soul, complete with measurements, in hopes that the pictures and numbers will improve in the coming months.

It wasn’t until the past two years that I noticed how much weight I was gaining. To be more precise, it wasn’t the weight, but rather how out of shape I felt. I played various sports at the competitive level from the ages of eleven to eighteen — at age sixteen, before anybody knew that I had stopped growing, I had try-outs for two Major League Baseball teams in Canada and the US. As with baseball, I also played hockey, often in international tournaments on a competitive team. Believe it or not, I was even a captain of my high school football team. And though I couldn’t have been farther in ideology from the stereotypical jock, I was proud of my physique. Athleticism and competition came easy to me.

That was, of course, until I left for university. For the past four years, my only physical activity has been skateboarding on an occasional basis. This, combined with my new-found love for food (I’d previously thought of food as simply fuel for my body) allowed me to become out of shape and overweight to the point where it started to affect my self-esteem. I couldn’t fit into several of my favorite pairs of pants and I had trouble with physical activities that had never previously given me any trouble. In some ways I can understand how overweight people continue to gain weight — it’s easier to take the elevator than the stairs, and the more you take the elevator, the less of a choice you have — it’s more difficult for somebody thirty or more pounds overweight to climb several sets of stairs, or even do simple things like take out the trash or play with their children. To use that tired cliche, it’s a destructive cycle, to say the least.

I must admit that one of my prime motivators to get back into shape is my appearance. It’s difficult to express exactly how or why I feel that this is important to me. While clothed, I do not appear out of shape any more than the next person. But like many men, I carry my weight around my stomach, and in the past two years I’ve really noticed a growing bulge when I looked down (my stomach, silly!). Leaning against the front counter in the lobby of the body art studio where I worked reminded me of this: my stomach was the first thing to hit the counter as I leaned forward, and it always felt bloated, an external extension of my “real” body.

Well, it’s time to lay bare the nitty-gritty, no matter how embarrassing some of it may be. Welcome to “Dustin: Before!”

At this point, I’ve completed my first week of training with Will, my personal trainer at a large fitness centre in downtown Toronto. Will has trained several fitness and body-building champions throughout Ontario, and at his hourly rate, I’m fairly certain that I’m in good hands. I think it’s fairly important to remark here that I was greeted with a warm smile by everybody I met on my first visit to this club. This isn’t to advertise for this company (I’m not going to give away the name), but this made me feel much more comfortable than I had anticipated. I expected a bunch of steroid junkies and anorexic women, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. This situation is similar to visiting a new body modification studio: your first question to yourself should be do I feel comfortable? I certainly did.

[Editor’s note: In my own case, I held off going to the gym for so long because I was embarrassed to be so out of shape. I was deathly afraid to parade my shame in front of people who I knew would be in dramatically better shape… I was surprised to find out that the people I met at the gym, no matter how fit they were, never judged me or treated me with disdain — the worse shape I appeared to be in, the happier they were to see me there, knowing what a wonderful positive adventure I was beginning. If you are holding off on making this change in your life for this reason, don’t let it stop you!]

Ten minutes after meeting Will for the first time, he had me jump through some hoops (figuratively) to figure out my “before” measurements. I stood on this space age-looking machine, which told me I weighed twenty pounds more than I thought I did! I knew that I was in for a rough ride. I even had the nerve to tell Will that I thought the scale was wrong. The last time I had weighed myself was when I was in shape at 145 pounds. Because of a semi-sedentary lifestyle since then, and because I don’t actually have a second or third chin, I had imagined my weight hovering near 155 lbs. Boy was I wrong! After this, Will took a tape measure to my body and wrote it all down. I was then given a print-out from the space age machine which confirmed just how out of shape I was:

Height: 5′ 6″
Age: 23
Clothed: Yes

Current Body Weight: 175.0 lbs / 79.3 Kg1
Total Body Fat: 20.7%2 35.2 lbs / 16.0 Kg
Fat-Free Mass: 79.3% 135.2 lbs / 61.3 Kg
Total Body Water: 60.5%3 46.8 ltr
Body Mass Index: 274

Your target weight range is 151.4 to 159.5 lbs.

1 approximately 20 lbs overweight
2 average male body fat is 10% to 20%
3 this number is very low, indicative of excessive body fat
4 does not take into account muscle vs. fat weight

While I have no idea how many calories I’d normally consume in a day, a normal range for me should be approximately 2000 calories. I was told that I was going to have to up my caloric intake to 3000 calories per day in order to build muscle with the level of activity I was about to undertake with Will every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. The most difficult part of the past two weeks has been eating as much as I’m supposed to. Even though I am overweight, I almost always eat very well and try not to over-eat. Fortunately, I was accustomed to eating several smaller meals throughout the day, but now because of my increased caloric intake, I find myself eating much more than I used to. The increased intake is so that I can gain muscle while working out, instead of using my existing muscle to fuel my workouts. Breakfast is still something that I’m getting used to, and because of the foods and protein that I’m eating so early in the morning, my stomach often puts up a good fight — but I haven’t lost yet.

My before measurements are as follows:

Chest: 37″
Waist: 36″ (wow!)
Thigh: 21.25″
Calf: 14.5″

It goes without saying that I won’t be winning any body building championships anytime soon… as you can see here:

With that out of the way, we started a 45-minute fitness assessment, which involved me sweating my brains out while trying to do the simplest of activities such as push-ups and sit-ups. The last time I did these exercises I didn’t have nearly this much trouble! I grunted and sweated and grunted some more throughout the short session. My body felt like it should have given up long ago, but I loved every minute of it. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face for the rest of the day — I may be woefully out of shape, but at least I was taking control and doing something about it! I felt on top of the world. Invincible.

That is, until I had to shower. I couldn’t take my shirt off! The sheer amount of sweat had adhered my shirt to my swollen body, and I could barely move my arms. This part wasn’t so much fun. I spent the next day trying to make up for my lack of stretching, but it didn’t do much good. I’ve since learned my lesson and always spend at least ten minutes stretching after each session.

I have had only five sessions since that fateful day, and I can say without hesitation that I am already stronger than I was last week. I have figured out a stretching routine and I look forward to going to the gym to see if I can better last session’s results. I have always been competitive, so competing with my previous self, in order to see progress, is not a difficult thing to do. Sure, I get disappointed when I can’t lift as much weight or do as many push-ups as the last time I worked out. But I don’t get discouraged because at least I’m doing something! More than anything, it’s great to actually feel alive again. Far from being a chore or a punishment, my workouts have already helped improve my confidence, my energy level and my spirits. My posture is better, and I no longer have any bouts of hypoglycemia. My skin has even cleared up!

In conclusion, I cannot stress enough how much I love the feeling of being alive again and taking part in life rather than letting it pass by. I realize that I sound like a cheerleader, and that’s fine. I have decided to make physical fitness and activity a permanent part of my life, not something to do in order to shed a few pounds while writing an article for an e-zine. The results are already showing, and I can’t wait to give you an update next month!

Dustin Sharrow

Next month’s column will give you an update about my progress, as well as discussing proper nutrition.