Hide and Seek: The truth of your body

In the Book The Prosthetic Impulse by Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra there is an essay called “The Vulnerable Articulate which I found to have an interesting relation to certain objects we have and use today in our world. This essay has a letter in it from 1907 from a woman who had just received a prosthetic leg and how grateful she was for it. Her friends did not even recognize her since she had been known to always have a crutch. What struck my attention was when Smith said, “This is a perfect instance of the history of the development of prosthetic technology as it stands and falls on its ability to play hide- and- seek with the truth.”(49). Playing hide-and –seek with the truth, isn’t this something that most of us do? For the prosthetic leg is helping the woman walk and she can cover it up with her clothes. The process of putting the leg on is in the privacy of her home. Unless she verbally tells someone who she does not know that she has a fake leg nobody but herself would know that under her pants or under her skirt is a prosthetic leg. However this leg makes her feel good inside that she can now “pass” as being or at least looking normal to those on the outside.

This brings me to the article “Active Ingredients,” by Dan Rose. Rose talks about a man taking a shower and the process of showering when he then gets shampoo in eyes. This causes him to then look at the shampoo and read the directions and to see that is named Head and Shoulders by the Proctor Gamble Company. Washing your hair with a specific shampoo can actually have the same affect as a woman putting on a prosthetic leg. Here is how: The act of taking a shower and washing your hair is done privately. While in the shower it doesn’t matter what shampoo you use but it cleans your hair. Once your hair dries afterward your hair looks clean and can even make it glow. There is a process of getting your hair to have that affect and to most likely make you feel good about yourself and that act takes place in the privacy of your home.

Objects ranging from all kinds from prosthetic body parts to shampoos and body cleansing products there are company’s creating objects that are used privately in order hide the truth. We all use products that hide the truth and people have been for hundreds of years. Think about a woman’s corset. A woman wore a corset to change the shape of her body. I’m not sure if Fianna Grube wore a corset with her wedding dress but considering the year she was married 1856 it wouldn’t be surprising. The way her dress was tight at the top and the skirt flowed could have also shaped her body and was able to hide the truth of her body as well.