The Allure of Body Dissociation

Examining the Instagram account of TomBoyX underwear and Vogue model, Chellaman, a young woman who has had her healthy breasts amputated to express a “non-binary identity,” I can feel the allure of beautiful, young faces, clever performance, talented photography, fashion, color and style as the photos coalesce into corporately stylized glamour. The allure, for me, though I am an artist and appreciate fashion, is unexpected. The images are nothing like the surgery scars on the young women I’m used to seeing, who’ve just undergone this barbaric surgery to amputate healthy immature sex organs. Those pictures tell the truth about unnecessary surgeries. Chellaman’s modeling photos are selling a fantasy, the glamorization of body dissociation.

How can young people resist body dissociation displayed as fashion if I, fully aware of and writing to expose the tragedies of the gender identity industry, can get momentarily sucked in by the deliberate corporate cultivation of desire and beauty made out of the unnecessary amputation of healthy sex organs? I teeter on the edge of this kafkaesque ledge.

Chellaman’s message is one of self-definition overriding biological reality, a message of empowerment, designing the self with drugs and amputations that serve the medical-industrial complex and somehow, we are all to consider this a human rights movement.

Chellaman, an Instagram influencer and YouTuber with a manufactured sex identity, has come a long way since her TomBoyX modeling days. She has been featured in Instinct Magazine and Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Popsugar, and other fashion spreads, walked NYC Fashion week runway, posed for Gay Times UK and Calvin Klein (another fashion house celebrating body dissociation as progressive), had her own Tedx Talk, and is looking toward her first television role In season two of the live-action adaption of Teen Titans.

How do parents fight the onslaught of these advertising campaigns targeting their children when attempting to discuss the realities of corporately cultivated identity medicine and the life-long consequences and complications of making such decisions?

Why are so many people refusing to resist these corporate messages?

A decade ago, the normalization of adults transgressing their sex, with modern medicine and technology, was well underway via media presentations and Hollywood. But the trend of glamorizing medical identities was not yet in its zenith. Six years ago, the narrative of the "transgender child," had only just emerged on the cultural landscape. Suddenly, children born in the wrong sexed body seemed everywhere and were marketed as having the terrible condition of gender dysphoria that needed treatment, clinics, specialized medicine, surgeons, and above all, compassion. Gender clinics for youth proliferated across the American landscape, along with the advancements of "trans" identified characters in the media, and children presenting to "gender" clinics rose exponentially. The "poor transgender child" emerged alongside a sudden glamorization of adult "transitioning." The shift from a terrible disorder of body dysmorphia to celebrating adults and children using drugs and surgeries to de-sex their bodies as progressive, trendy, and cool has been swift and penetrating.

The glamorization of de-sexing young women, in particular, has initiated clever t-shirt campaigns and online apparel stores selling body dissociation as fashion accessories.

How do those of us fighting the normalization of body dissociation compete with an industry that allows for this glamorization of dismemberment?

It breaks my heart that young people are being sucked into this madness, but what entirely unhinges me is that corporations are getting away with selling it to them. Underwear, sneakers, shaving products, menstrual products, and fashion are being sold with the dismembered bodies of society's youth (or the mock dismemberment in some instances), promoting liberation, sterilization and de-sexing while wrapping them in the chains of the medical-industrial complex.

The recording industry is capitalizing on the glamour of body dissociation with Music videos selling false transformations that obscure the horror being done to young bodies with a lifetime sewn to Big Pharma.

Aviccii’s Silhouettes has had nearly a billion views on youtube.

Avicii Lyrics for Silhouettes

Press play, fast forward

Nonstop, we have a beaten path before us

It was all there, in plain sight

Come on people, we have all seen the signs

So we will never get back to

To the old school

To the old grounds, it's all about the newfound

We are the newborn, the world knew all about us

(We are the future and we're here to stay)

We've come a long way since that day

And we will never look back at the faded silhouette

We've come a long way since that day

And we will never look back, look back at the faded silhouette

Straight ahead on the path we have before us

Day by day, soon the change will come

Don't you know we took a big step forward

Just lead the way and we pull the trigger

And we will never get back to

To the old school

To the old grounds, it's all about the newfound

We are the newborn, the world knew all about us

(We are the future and we're here to stay)

We've come a long way since that day

And we will never look back at the faded silhouette

We've come a long way since that day (that day...)

We've come a long way since that day

And we will never look back, at the faded silhouette

We've come a long way since that day

And we will never look back, look back, at the faded silhouette

Have all the adults left the room? How can we allow corporations to sell this to our children, to swallow their wholeness with the promise of a transformation that can not only never materialize but is insane, lifting them out of their roots in their sexed bodies and promoting a new horizon of humanity separate from sex and biology?

As the voice of Avicii trails off in the song about fading silhouettes, “We are the newborn, we are the future, and we’re here to stay,” the only thing I see fading is a future of wholeness for our youth and the debris of body parts and bloody surgical implements left behind on some operating table before our youth are even marginally aware of the power of corporations selling false dreams.

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