Wunderkammer
Hands
I always admired people’s hands; you can tell how hard they work from looking at their hands. My father’s hands were always calloused and stiff from years of bodybuilding and carpentry. They are softer now, the callouses replaced with new, aged skin, but their stiffness remains. My mother never painted her nails. She is a healer, using her hands to mitigate pain from aggrieved bodies. There is a comforting quality to simply holding her hand. I look at my own hands, riddled with eczema, always repainted every two weeks; I figure nice nails will juxtapose the swelling from the dermatitis, and they will look just a little less Frankensteinesque. Perhaps I was blessed with smooth feet to compensate.
Feet
I am five feet, nine inches in height. I got called “clown feet” a couple of times. I would squeeze into shoes a size too small in middle school to make people think I had dainty, feminine feet. My pinky toe now stands erect, never touching the floor because it grew into the shape of size eight-and-a-half knock-off Vans. I wear a size nine-and-a-half now; the average shoe size for my height is a size ten.
Legs
Giraffe. Shaq. Eiffel Tower (or Big Ben, depending on which European country the insult felt like deriving from that day). I was ridiculed for my height daily growing up. I have very long legs. I was sent to the principal’s office for dress code “violations” almost weekly, and my mother at first would attempt to defend me, telling my (male) principal that shopping for school-appropriate shorts at my height was nearly impossible. After a while, she didn’t bother trying to defend me to the male PE teacher who sent me to the male principal; she just picked me up and took me to get my favorite coffee. I like my legs now — knock-knees and all.
Knees
“How to fix knock-knees”; “Is there surgery for knock-knees?”; “Exercises to straighten knock-knees”. My Google searches from age fourteen to eighteen looked like that. And, of course, there was always a search result from the website of a local surgeon who promised me he could give me million-dollar legs for a similar price. Why did I want to fix myself so badly? These knees have played basketball and softball and tennis; these knees have supported my weight and the weight of my nephew wanting to ride my back; these knees have seen four separate dislocations and three hospital trips and countless crutches. These are my knees. These are my knock-knees. They carry my weight just right.
Stomach
I think I may be lactose intolerant, but I need a better reason than that to keep me away from cheese. I was an athletic kid — I was always thin and toned. In middle school, I stayed fairly thin. My body changed and certain things grew, but I was still thin. I got made fun of for being skinny. I gained weight in high school, sick of all of the skinny jokes. My thighs and my rear grew pretty quickly. Then I got called a slut for having curves. Depression set in — I ate even more. Then I got called fat (sometimes a “fat slut” — imagine that!). I think my body has transcended one static body type and has instead experimented with all of them. I’m a lot healthier now. I’m still thin, comparatively speaking. But I don’t think I’ll ever have abs. My soft stomach is the result of French cheeses and Irish beers, so my stomach is far more cultured than most people I know.
Eyes
My eyes are my favorite feature. My driver’s license says they’re green, but that’s only half-true. Some days they’re a rich hazel, like honey-coated ash; some days they’re dark, almost fully brown, but still blazing; other days they’re a bright green, full of fortune and serendipity — those days are my favorite. I’ve been insecure about each and every particle of my body at least once in my life, but never about this everchanging pair of optics that show me all of the other parts of myself.
Mind
In elementary school, I was considered gifted. But all that meant was that I was good at reading. I got lazy — I’m gifted, I shouldn’t have to work hard. But I’m not gifted. Gifted in eloquence and well-versed in literature, perhaps; but I have no idea what the Korean War was about. What the hell is trigonometry going to teach me? How do I balance a check book? Thank God for Google. But this does not diminish my intelligence. I have men (and sometimes women) tell me all of the time that they are “surprised” that I am intelligent. Apparently, beauty and brilliance cannot coexist (and God forbid you acknowledge your own beauty. Blasphemy!). But I have an agile mind. I’m usually a lot smarter than the men that make these comments, anyhow.
Mouth
If my mom catches me opening something using my teeth, she reminds me she “spent ten thousand dollars on those teeth!” I used to have a huge overbite and gap-teeth. Now my teeth are perfectly aligned, one right after the other without a space in between. I do have that one discolored tooth because of a root canal, but why spend more than the ten thousand already spent? My moderately thin lips typically cover them anyways. Besides, my mouth is merely a vessel of elucidating my intelligence and flashing a coy smile right after. That’s what ten thousand dollars at the orthodontist allows you to do.
