The Chimera Manifesto. “The animalization of the female body”. An essay about aesthetic medicine

Abstract

In Greek mythology, the Chimera is a monstrous creature composed of various animals. Etymologically related, “Chimeric” refers to something “fantastic or imaginary.” This visual essay is dedicated to (de)constructing the modern Chimera. This fantastical female being comprises parts from rabbits, crows, turkeys, and bats. It carries bananas on the back of its thighs and sports saddlebags.

Incorporating Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, my focus extends beyond the cyborg—an amalgam of machine and biology existing in both real and fictional domains—to her adept utilization of irony. Recognizing that irony is humor but also a serious game, it functions as a rhetorical strategy and a political method. More than just a method, it becomes a manifesto. Through years of feminist research on the construction, reinvention, commodification, and medicalization of the female body, I stumbled upon terms like ‘bunny lines’; ‘crow’s feet’, ‘banana rolls’, ‘turkey neck’, and ‘bat wings’, crafted to define unique conditions of the female body. In this provocative visual essay, using ethnographic data, social media research and AI-generated images, I intend to delve into how women’s bodies are reconfigured in the realm of plastic surgery, à-la-carte aesthetic procedures and the liberal market. The aim is to be, more than anything, as Haraway encourages, blasphemous.