“I became unsure even to the thing nearest to me, my own body.” — Franz Kafka
“When you get fat, you get a new personality,” wrote Hilary Mantel, who was given a drug to treat her endometriosis that changed her body from a thin shape she hadn’t much had to think about to something different.* The problem, beyond social conditioning around worth, is that the changing body alters meaning. You find yourself in a different country, feeling out of place in proverbial resort wear, wondering “who am I?”
“If you skew the endocrine system,” Mantel writes, “you lose the pathways to self.”
The words she uses to describe her transformation are otherworldly—she is “moon-faced,” her body waxes “like a strange fungus.” All of us find ourselves in different bodies year to year, and from time to time dabble in the horrors of surgical intervention and/or go through the one-way door of pregnancy and childbirth, but it’s not always easy to process or accept the physical reality (see: Kafka).** In the same way I’ve ruined my daughter’s teeny socks by wearing them as toe warmers, it’s hard to imagine my once-watermelon-sized uterus recovering its innocence after two tours of duty. After birth and episiotomy, the attending was camped out stitching the nethers for at least as long as a West Wing episode — you know it’s not the same as it was.
“A woman's pelvis … is a portal. It has a pulse,” wrote Molly Caro May in Body Full of Stars, about the link between postpartum healing and mood. “It is here a woman can converse with ancestors, herself, and any energy that shows up." But it can be hard to converse, when the pelvis has been through the garbage disposal.
For those who have “had the roots of their personality torn up,” writes Mantel, the task is to “find yourself, in the maze of social expectation, the thickets of memory: just which bits of you are left intact?”
So, I’m devoting two installments of KAFKA’S BABY to some novel frameworks for viewing your changing body.
One person whose approach stands out is Sally Hewett, a UK-based artist who works with embroidery, fabric, and stitching to make textile replicas of body parts. Picture a chair undulating with adipose tissue and heavy breasts blooming from the backrest, or a beautifully stitched nipple with several hairs threaded delicately alongside. These are often hung in an oval frame, sprouting out of a canvas like a living moss wall.
Hewett doesn’t just find aesthetic beauty in the quirks of a body, but sees the changes and scars as contributing meaning. The act, too, of creating a body by hand, loop by loop, forces you to appreciate the fact of one. To trust the body doing its work.
I hope you love this chat as much as I did! Here’s Sally explaining her process.
KAFKA’S BABY: Your artist statement notes an interest in "bodies which show their history, that have been altered by their experiences, that are decorated with bruises, scars, spots, stretch marks, freckles, pigmentation, veins. Bodies that have the marks of life on them." From an artistic perspective, does change and alteration provide you material? i.e., is there less to explore, less poetic material, in a body that has remained the same?
SALLY HEWETT: Yes, change and alteration do provide me with material. I’m old so I’ve experienced at firsthand how bodies change over time and, although I’m not exactly delighted with how my own body has changed, I’m fascinated by it and by other people’s. I don’t think this is a thought-about, or a theorised thing, I’ve just always found less-than-perfect bodies much more interesting and much more appealing. As a child I envied the girl with protruding front teeth and a prominent upper lip—I thought they made her lovely. And later when I was a teenager I wanted acne scars on my cheeks like one of the prefects at my school. And the thing I wanted most was hair around my nipples—like the girl in the church choir. So these were changes or alterations I hoped would happen to my body. One out of three’s not bad.
What I love about a changed or changing body is that its history is documented and illustrated by the shapes and marks and damage that the body keeps a record of—sometimes forever. The body is constantly renewing its cells and where there is damage—say a scar—it renews the scar rather than replacing it with perfect unmarked skin. Almost as if it doesn’t want you to forget the incident that resulted in the scar—“remember that time in 1989 when you fell on your face because you were too busy watching that chap skateboarding along the wall?” Even young, undamaged bodies, have a visible history in as much as they show their heritage to a greater or lesser extent. They might have their grandmother’s nose, their father’s feet, identical ears to their great uncle. What I sometimes think is a bit sad is having plastic surgery to change those things that have survived and developed as bodily characteristics over centuries.
KB: Fabric and thread are interesting proxies for skin, fat, and sinew. What has your medium taught you about our bodies?
SH: I’m not sure that the materials as such have taught me very much about bodies but the techniques and the research I have done have taught me a lot as have the conversations I’ve had with people about the work.
The process of stitching and embroidery is slow and repetitive, so you have plenty of time to think and consider. For example, while I’m embroidering a nipple, each french knot or backstitch or overstitch changes how the nipple develops. So what I have in mind when I start a piece changes as the stitches develop and interact with each other and then they begin to take on a life of their own, over which I seem to have little control. I suppose it is similar to the process of painting where the artist responds to the changes that occur with each brushstroke, but paint is more malleable and perhaps to some extent easier to bend to the artist’s will.
“What I have in mind when I start a piece changes as the stitches develop and interact with each other and then they begin to take on a life of their own, over which I seem to have little control.”
Stitching is a very contemplative process and that includes contemplation of the subject matter of the work. When I’m stitching, say, postpartum bodies it’s a strange sensation inasmuch as I haven’t had children so I haven’t experienced at firsthand what it’s like to have such extreme bodily changes. But maybe because they haven’t affected me directly I’m able to view them in a nonjudgemental way. People often show me parts of their bodies in response to seeing my work—being in the presence of the work seems to make it more comfortable for people to talk about and reveal those bodily characteristics which are sometimes seen as ugly or disgusting. One of the most beautiful things I have been shown was the postpartum stretch marks that were the inspiration for Beautiful Stretch (2017).
But maybe we find this difficult to see as beautiful because we are constantly bombarded with the idea that it is ugly. Some time ago a man who came to one of my exhibitions was quite moved by a stretch marks piece. He was with his daughter and he said that his wife’s stretch marks were a constant reminder of the birth of his lovely daughter. His daughter left the room.
I suppose the materials and techniques used in needlework are similar to those used in surgery. Sometimes when I’m unpicking something which hasn’t quite worked or if I’m cutting open fabric it feels as if I might be doing something surgical!
You mention the story of your grandmother going through a single mastectomy and finding positivity in the "neat stitching" of the surgeon. What is your philosophy when it comes to disease, aging, and other bodily changes?
My grandmother was an extraordinary woman. She was very stoical about her mastectomy—it saved her life and that was really all that mattered to her. Her admiration of the surgeon’s stitching skill was the admiration of one expert stitcher for another. My philosophy regarding disease, aging and other bodily changes has changed dramatically over my lifetime, as it probably does for everyone.
I was an incredibly shy and self-conscious teenager and hated how I looked and how my body changed with puberty and how I put on weight and developed stretch marks and all the rest of it. But over time how I look and how other people view me has become less and less of an obsession. I still care about how I look and I am still self-conscious but it’s a very small part of what I’m concerned about. I suspect like most people it took me 40 years or so to value good health and good relationships as the crucial things in life, rather than physical appearance!
I specifically focus on how pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding/parenting alter the body, and on how we adjust to and make sense of that. Could you speak to how you view postpartum bodies, or what you see *in* them?
I haven’t had babies so I don’t have firsthand experience of a postpartum body, but I have had many conversations with those lovely people who send me photos of their postpartum bodies—some of whom love them and some of whom hate them. I’m not sure how I view postpartum bodies if I’m honest. They’re all classified as postpartum bodies but no two postpartum bodies are the same. They may have some or all of the same characteristics—stretch marks, breasts which are no longer as pert as they once were, large nipples, varicose veins, etc. They are not one thing are they; they differ enormously. I know what it’s like to have stretch marks and to put on weight and to not like the body I’m in but I don’t have experience of being pregnant, giving birth, breastfeeding etc., which I imagine has a quite profound effect on how a woman views both inner self and her own postpartum body.
“I’m not sure how I view postpartum bodies if I’m honest. They’re all classified as postpartum bodies but no two postpartum bodies are the same.”
My interest is in how the body records its history—the body as documentary. So however much postpartum bodies may vary they always carry a record of what has happened to them recorded in the form of those things which characterise postpartum bodies.
Lastly, your work isolates body parts, removing the context of other identities and purposes. Can you talk about why this is your method?
I think it’s because I’m sort of looking at the body as if through a magnifying glass or a microscope. So just as a magnifying glass isolates a particular thing from it’s surroundings, so I am looking at specifics of the body not at the body as a whole (at least in the wall-hung work). The embroidery hoops are my magnifying glasses. I suppose by concentrating on a small part of the body and by magnifying, say, stretch marks, it’s possible to see them differently. Instead of seeing them as part of a greater whole you can see them for themselves. I’m interested in how we see things and how we interpret what we see. So maybe we see stretch marks or varicose veins as ugly and as something that makes the body ugly, but maybe in closeup we see them as something different—something separate from the body but showing story behind it or even as something beautiful—a beautiful pattern.
At one of my exhibitions where I was showing a psoriasis piece, a lovely man invited me to photograph the plague psoriasis on his calf. I did and as an isolated close up it looked like beautiful, delicate lace—which I’ve tried to replicate in stitch but have so far failed. I don’t want to underestimate the discomfort or distress that some of these conditions can cause to those who experience them but I just think it might be possible to change how they’re seen, even if only in the smallest way. But I’m not trying to change the world—the things I make are really a celebration of our bodies and our differences.
You can find Sally Hewett on Instagram, and find information on future events on her website.
*Putting aside Hilary Mantel’s 2003 definition of “fat,” her writing focused on the ways that your physical appearance affects the way people see and describe you, and the way body anxiety and a poor perception of health can impact your quality of life.
**I’m interested here in the more philosophical side of things, body-wise, but for some good resources and recs on body-positivity, mental health support, and anti-diet points-of-view, I like:
Nurture by Erica Chidi Cohen — for pregnancy through early parenthood
What No One Tells You by Dr. Alexandra Sacks and Catherine Birndorf — as above
Burnt Toast — a great anti-diet podcast and newsletter from Virginia Sole Smith
Jessie Diggins’ advocacy as an athlete recovering from an ED, and partner with the Emily Program
Womb, by Leah Hazard — forthcoming; you’ll never look at your belly the same way again
Hot tip
You’re tired and they’re not, so you ask them to spell out their names while you lie on the bed taking the photos:
This is low-lift and can chew through a good 15 lingering bedtime minutes.
Goodies
Really enjoyed this dispatch from Susannah Felts exploring the geologic formations and pondering time and our little relationships (I think I found her via Ann Friedman)
Sophie Haigney joins the press pilgrimage to see the Joan Didion estate sale:
I am always struck by how things that feel like they belong in a particular time and place insist on lasting, lasting past the person who assembled them and made them into a life.
And thanks to the friend who put me onto this performance of the Waltz of the Snowflakes by Post:ballet on some piece of tarmac in Alameda.
Thank you for reading KAFKA’S BABY <3 <3 <3 I’d be thrilled if you want to share it! Or to send an “ahoy” my way.
If you thought this was a bit of alright, you might like some previous KAFKA’S on:
Love! Great Article!
It helps to see things differently!
Makes you think ! Thank you !