More Fake Body Parts

When I was writing Fake Body Parts, I thought it would be a good idea to check in with Sara, a blogger who lost a leg to cancer.

Sara describes herself on her blog, Moving Right Along, as “… a happy, ordinary, middle-aged, suburban woman who paints odd pictures, gardens in a straw hat, lives with the love of her life, is owned by the ghosts of several cats, and walks a little funny 'cause she has a FAKE LEG.” (emphasis mine)

I e-mailed Sara and asked her the following questions:

“I noticed on your blog that you say right out that you have a fake leg. Is that what you usually say? Do you ever call it a prosthesis? Do you like that word? Do you call it anything else, like George or Charlie?”

Here is her reply:

Ha--Given the general shape and color of such things, I particularly love the name "Jabba." I also love that you consider yours a "he." It reminds me of something my very prudish mother used to titter over, if you'll pardon the pun, and then relate in a whisper, Mark Twain (if I remember correctly) going on and on in something he wrote during one of his European trips about how preposterous it was that the German word for a woman's breast was masculine in gender.

Well, if any breast is masculine, it's gotta be a fake one.

I don't know why people freak out over the word "boob." My mother did, but she was the sort who would have been very comfortable in Dickensian England, provided she'd been one of the wealthy characters. She just thought that word was irretrievably vulgar, and it was enough to get our mouths washed out with Ivory soap if we uttered it in her presence as children. (So were the words "crap" and "damn," to put that into perspective, and by the frequency with which I use each you can tell how well that teaching method worked, but I digress.)

I, on the other hand, am a devoted reader of Twisty Faster, radical feminist author of the blog I Blame the Patriarchy, who has given up almost all her specifically female parts in an effort to battle breast cancer, and she calls the category under which she writes about every aspect of this simply "Boob". In this and other categories, she writes a lot about gender issues, and about demystifying and de-objectifying gender-specific body parts like boobs.

For her, I think "boob" is a word to lighten her fear and also a word of power in her feminism, a word to belittle any importance of her lost tissue that might attach over and above the fact that it was hers and having it cut off wasn't a big ol' party.

I'm kind of surprised there's controversy over this. I'd be interested to know the context of the use of "fake boob," the kind of cancer mag, and the interest of the people writing in, e.g., how many of them had personally experienced mastectomy or were mere family members/former admirers of particular missing breasts. [Note from Jeanne: two of the women had had mastectomies and use breast protheses; the other was an oncologist.] And you know, it could get so very ridiculous in the other direction, too. What if people referred to them as "simulated milk glands" or "prosthetic mammaries"? How delicate and technical are we supposed to get talking about these things? At what point is the description of your own body part--or replacement body part--threateningly casual vs. preposterously clinical?

Although bringing it up and making me think about it has inspired me to look for more creative terminology (e.g., "synthetic gam"?), there's no really offensive slang for "leg" of which I'm aware. As a hopeless nerd myself, I do sometimes worry about people taking me to task for calling my prosthetic leg a "fake leg," when in fact it is not fake, just not natural.

But then I catch myself, tell myself "Screw 'em if they don't have anything better to do with their consciousness," and just let the words flow however they're going to. "Fake leg" is so much faster to type than any other description, and everybody knows what I mean.

Nevertheless, in my blog as in my life, I have at one time or another called my leg each of the following:

fake leg
prosthesis
prosthetic leg
mechanical leg
artificial leg
replacement leg
Susie Dress-Me, Walk-Me

It depends on what mood I'm in and how big a hurry. Similarly, you may catch me saying any of the following:

fake knee
mechanical knee
hydraulic knee
plastic kneecap
prosthetic knee

fake shin
replacement shin
prosthetic shin
carbon fiber shin

fake foot
prosthetic foot
little rubber foot
ugly rubber foot with lurid stains

The assemblage is mine. My really crappy former insurance company and I paid $18,000 for it. I reserve the right to call it and every piece of it whatever I please. If anyone has ever been offended, s/he has never told me so. There is one disability blogger in Germany who links to me in her blogroll, and she does make special note of the way I use "fake leg" in her description of my site, but she doesn't seem to think it untoward or anything, just noteworthy.

Likewise, sometimes I say "stump," and sometimes I say "residual limb." I have read other people, especially other women, getting upset at the word "stump," but it's better (to my mind) than "stub," and is much faster to type than "residual limb," even for an ex-secretary with chronic diarrhea of the keyboard.

One positive thing I've gotten out of cancer is that while I've become a little more sensitive to genuine ways I can injure people, because I've become more aware how many walking wounded are out there, and how devastating but entirely secret some of their wounds are, I have also become someone who won't take a lot of crap over things that really don't matter.

I can understand someone raised to delicate sensibilities being affronted (again, if you'll pardon the pun) if you were to walk up to her as a stranger or even as a not very intimate acquaintance and start talking to her out of the blue about her "boob(s)"--or even your own in that context, now that I think about it--but that would be as much about subject matter as linguistics, I believe. On the other hand, the word "boob" is probably inappropriate for a formal cancer journal in exactly the same way "fake leg" would be in a journal of prosthetics and orthotics.

However, I strongly feel that how you choose to speak of your own "boob(s)," fake/prosthetic or otherwise, whether at your blog or anywhere else, is really not an issue anyone else should get her panties in a wad over--if you'll pardon the vulgarity. ;)

Though I'm often very pleased to say that I'm tremendously grateful to have a decent set of replacement parts at my disposal, the fact is there's no good way to say, "Cancer ate my body, so now I have to use this instead."

I strongly feel that a good thing to say, however you want to say it, as many times as you want to say it, and with whatever nuanced slang words or direct declarative sentences or combination thereof that please you, is "Isn't it great to be alive?" I think you feel this, too. I'd be very surprised to hear otherwise.

Thank you, Sara, for giving me a lot to think about, and for your talent with words. And yes, it is great to be alive, even with a piece or two missing.

Comments

[Teri]

I really liked Sara's descriptions of how she refers to her fake leg, even though I am without a fake spit gland (they just took the parotid out and radiated the residual to oblivion),. I checked on PubMed to see if 'fake leg' was used in any of the 17 million biomedical articles indexed on it - nope. They don't even map the term to prosthetic limb. Boob, however, is in 10 citations. Here is the link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=DetailsSearch&Term=boob%5BAll+Fields%5D&WebEnv=0fPW6eVChVoucgjNIt-p4-qo6dvmwgps5zAdb38lSv7M_V-HhiW2dsu_IQNMqD6LWmXPeC8c_A59o%40263E15C76678BCF0_0181SID&WebEnvRq=1
(sorry it is so long). Of course, this does include the author with Boob as a last name...

[Jeanne]

Teri--maybe you should lobby for a "fake spit gland"? Doesn't seem fair all the rest of us are running around with fake body parts and you don't have one. (Ha.)

It is so great to have a medical librarian on the team. I love all these contributions--especially the one you did on meltdowns.

Jeanne

[Sara]

It is hilarious that you ran that search, Teri. I can't believe how many people have the last name "Boob." Thanks for the laugh.

Hey, Jeanne, Did you see that this entire post and your picture got cut and pasted (format-free) into another blog? I hope they asked first!

Here's the link:

http://amputee-network.blogspot.com/2007/06/more-fake-body-parts.html

Cheers!

[Jeanne]

Sara--thanks, it looks like they took it down. Jeanne