heidikins.com

One Body Too Many

I have never really been the blood and guts and cadaver type.  Despite the fact that I am related to people who are ok with it, and despite the fact that I have seen a couple of episodes of E.R. and Grey’s Anatomy.  Really, the whole idea of seeing muscles or open wounds or anything like that makes me a bit queasy.  Or a lot queasy.  When I first heard about “Body World“, the science-based exhibit of real-but-plasticized body parts I kind of threw up a little in my mouth.  Body parts?  Real ones, right in front of me?  Ewww! 

All that queasiness and girlishness aside, Handsome convinced me that it would be awesome and promised that if I got squeamish we could leave.  Last week I braved the idea of body parts–real body parts–and dutifully showed up at The Leonardo at the Salt Lake Library. 

The body parts, they were everywhere.  Real ones, real ones with artificial parts, arms, legs, veins, nerves, bones, muscles…the works.  I was fascinated.  Absolutely fascinated.  I never knew that livers were that large, and I didn’t know that internal organs were that squooshed together and I had absolutely no idea that non-pregnant uteruses (uteri?) were that small.  Not only did the exhibit have individual organs, but there were entire bone and muscle bodies posed so you could see all the different parts.  FASCINATING! 

I could go on and on about the different systems, the different process, the different parts…but I won’t.  I realize that for some of you it is pre-lunch and you may not be all excited about blood and guts and such.  If you’re here, I highly suggest you go see the Body World exhibit.  If you aren’t here, when the tour hits your city, show up.

That being said…there was something less than awesome about the exhibit.  Towards the end of our wander through the Leonardo, around all the exhibits, stepping around the dozen or so sketch artists expanding their portfolios, I was hit smack-dab with a full frontal male art model.  Not a striking anatomically correct mannequin, but a real-life (read, living, breathing, chatting), saggy, middle aged, man with a mop of curly hair and a pair of Tevas.  Oh. My. Laws.  It was terrifying.  And it didn’t go away!  For some reason I thought that prior to allowing unsuspecting patrons to wander into a nudey, arty….thing I would have to sign some kind of form, or document, or something.  In San FranciscoI’d expect a naked man lounging around in public, but not in Salt Lake City.  Ugh.  It was horrifying!  However, at least the middle-aged nekid man was waxed.  Say wha?  Waxed?  Really?

I wax.  Some of you wax.  But a middle-aged man waxed from back to belly button?  Um…yikes! Wow! Yikes!  I really don’t know how to respond to this, other than the absolute embarrassment combined with mortification and horrific curiosity.  And perhaps a semi-serious case of the giggles.  What can I say?  I guess I’m really just a quasi-freak.  Although really, what would you have done?  It’s not like he was tucked in the corner somewhere discreet…the man was standing in the freaking middle of the room, well lit and surrounded by people.  People who kept saying things like “Would you please arch your back a little more”, and “Put your left foot up on that step”, and other horribly descriptive phrases.  You couldn’t help but notice.

I have done a quick check, and the nekid man is not always at the exhibit.  So, buy your tickets early, do not eat chicken before you visit, (human muscles and tendons have a striking resemblance to raw chicken…I’m just sayin’), and prepare to be fascinated.

17 Comments so far
Leave a comment