At 55

Skin Capture Exposure at 55

At the age of 48, my original Skin Capture Exposure page marked a turning point in my sense of self. Prior to that I struggled to look at my body, to know it’s fat, the wrinkles, the scars, the lopsidedness of my face and back. The process of taking the photos, sorting through them and putting them on-line was painful for a fair while before it was liberating.

I’ve looked back at them a few times and known that even though I’d said “scars, fat and all” I’d still not selected some of the least flattering images and I didn’t want my face to be clearly recognisable. The fact of posting them was the start of a process of change. I am more open now and have made no effort to hide my face. When I’m naked and I look like this. I also decided to further cast off my unwanted male gender and open myself up as being gender-queer. The irony of that “change” seen against the very obviously naked male type body I have isn’t lost on me – when naked I look everybit like the binary identity of “man” that I want to reject. But that is fine, it’s the male gender not the male genitals and body that I reject.

With the help of Titch, my deeply lovely partner and source of so much joy and inspiration, I’ve taken several similar photos of how I was at age 55 (I’m 56 now and it’s just taken me an age to sort this out!). I’ve more or less reproduced a few, and some are different. Since I was 48 I’ve had some tattoos. I also had more spinal surgury and it has been a long lasting, bad experience with permanent damage to the nerves serving my right leg. I have all sorts of pain and discomfort in that leg and the muscles are deteriorating in a way that is becoming visible – I am angry and sad about my leg but it is as it is.

Head

I’d forgotten how purple my hair looked last summer, mid-sodding Covid. I can’t deny that I’m uncomfortable with that side image of my head. I try to hide my increasingly scraggy neck, which is futile given that I only don’t even successfully hide it from myself.

Shoulders and back

I have a no-knot tattoo that was hand-poked by a good friend, Katie, and it reminds me of her and the strange and funny times we shared together. She said that, if the line was made of string, you could pick it up at any point and it would not form a knot.

I have a snake too now – I just like snakes, it isn’t something deep . The scar on my back is now much deeper than it was in the first set of images, the result of a further two operations. Whenever I say to people that I have one buttock larger than the other, they have have all said I don’t, which is clearly, visibly, rubbish. I find it really odd, why is one cheek bigger than the other?

Legs

I have two small tattoos that I hand-poked on my legs. One of is of a little house person designed by Jessie, the person who helped me with the first set of images when I was 48. On the other leg I poked a beetle for no particular reason. It’s interesting me that this time around I’m just not being shy to show my genitals – it’s just skin.

The photo of the back of my leg worries me, I obviously don’t get to see it ordinarily and it’s upsetting to see how the skin and muscles are changing to look quite different to my left leg.