"The Illustrated Lady"

Julia Gnuse, the most tattooed woman in the world, is inked on over 95% of her body. According to an interview conducted with the Today Show, the tattoos "are not a vanity project; they’re actually a type of camouflage" (Inbar). Gnuse suffers from a skin disorder, cutaneous porphyria, which causes her to blister when exposed to any amount of sunlight. After her first few tattoos, Gnuse succumbed to what those in the body modification community refer to as 'the itch.' And now, aside from "part of her upper lip area and the skin near her ears," her entire body is covered in tattoos instead of scars (Inbar).

Does Gnuse's use of tattoos as "camouflage" effect her beauty or how she could be considered beautiful? While her sores, if left alone in their 'natural' state, would most likely be considered to deem Gnuse ugly, grotesque, or disfigured, the tattoos change the perception of her skin in a different way.  Umberto Eco writes that "just as the decoration of a facade adds Beauty to buildings and rhetorical decoration adds Beauty to discourses, so does the human body appear beautiful thanks to natural ornaments (the navel, the gums, the breasts), as well as artificial ones (clothing and jewelry)" (113). If we were to consider tattoos artificial ornaments, it would be simple to don Gnuse's tattooss beautiful--breathtaking, even. She is more ornamented and decorated than anyone else in the world, so does that make her most beautiful?

Eco quotes Thomas Aquinas in saying that "a thing was beautiful provided that it was suited to its function, in the sense that a mutilated body--or an excessively small one--or an object incapable of correctly performing the function for which it was conceived [...] was to be considered ugly even if produced with valuable materials" (111). On one hand, Gnuse's body and skin are still capable of performing their 'normal' functions (as we discussed in class--skin functions as a protective shelter, a part representing a whole, a boundary between our body and the outside world, a place of encounter, etc.) Tattoos don't make her skin less able to protect her body or desensitize it from make it less able to protect her body. On the other hand, many would consider even a single, large tattoo to be too much and would argue against altering one's skin so heavily. A person with these views might say that Gnuse went too far and her skin no longer serves its 'normal' function, or that it no longer represents any form of 'natural' beauty. Some might say that the tattoos are a form of mutilation--even though they are "valuable materials" (enough sessions to cover an entire body must cost thousands of dollars). And while Gnuse's skin was mutilated prior to the tattoos (her scars), some might argue that her choice to battle nature lends it to be ugly.


As was discussed in class, some things that different cultures consider beautiful (lip plates, neck rings, etc.) disrupt the normal function of a  body. However, both lip plates and neck rings would be considered beautiful by Eco's standards of ornamentation--they are artificial ornaments that 'enhance' natural ornaments. It's hard for us to look at someone with a stretched neck or lip and see its beauty--to us, it looks painful, uncomfortable, unnecessary, or simply strange. These ideas of beauty, as we've seen throughout the past few sections, are clearly cultural. Are the ideas of function cultural as well? Perhaps African tribes consider stretched lips to be entirely functional, because they serve the 'purpose' they were intended: finding a partner. The function might not be necessarily about biological function, just as beauty is not necessarily about worldly perspectives.

The real questions here are: how much is too much? When can we draw the line between 'normal' and 'strange'? Are we even capable of drawing this line, as long as the parts are still functional? Is function a valid argument of beauty?




Outside sources:
Inbar, Michael. "Ink up! Meet the world’s most tattooed woman." Todayshow.com. MSNBC, 27 May 2010. Web. <http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/37374413>.