short-story

Sometimes, face, hands, and feet are left undissected for a longer time unless there is a dissector specifically interested in these areas. Novice dissectors often feel a strong hesitation to make incision on those structures. We tend to identify individuals by their faces, as it is the most public and social part of the body. It serves as the primary interface between “I” and the society. We can’t see our faces directly: what we see is merely a reflection in a mirror or an image captured by a camera at a particular moment. As a result, a person’s self-image does not always align with their physical face.

When I went home for my father’s funeral, I found my junior high yearbook. I recognized the faces of girls I hadn’t seen in decades; one by one, they came back to life in my memory. I knew those teenage girls; they looked exactly as I remembered. I turned pages looking for my photo, but I couldn’t find it. I felt confused, being certain I was in the yearbook. I started over from the first page, and with each turn, the faces of the girls became clearer in my memory. Still I couldn’t find my own face.

On the third try, I finally found my name under a photo. She was a beautiful teenage girl. I didn’t recognize her because I had been told I was an ugly, unattractive, miserable creature—an image I had come to believe due to the distorted reflections I had been shown. Did I look ugly to you, Dad? Or did I threaten you? Did I look ugly to you, Mom? Or did you also believe what Dad saw?

Anyway, it’s too late. I lost the chance to live the life of a pretty girl and became a plain looking high school student. When I remember my high school years, I see myself as that unpopular girl with long hair hiding half of her face, like Violet Parr in The Incredibles, believing that she is invisible. My best friend is that popular girl who dates the football team captain. Years later, I had the opportunity to attend a high school reunion. One guy—who was neither the football team captain nor an academic high achiever—told me that I had been his crush in high school. I was stunned. “You were a beautiful and intelligent girl,” he said, “and I admired you.” I didn’t know. I knew he liked me, but I couldn’t believe that anyone would genuinely like me. So I missed the chance to live the life of a popular girl in high school. When surrounded by distorted mirrors, we come to believe the distorted images they reflect.

Some people are desperate to modify their faces to match their self-image. Skin is often rubbed, massaged, moisturized, medicated, and painted. It is sometimes cut, stretched, peeled, threaded, paralyzed, and modified in various ways. The skin of face, in particular, receives the most attention.

I often see older women in my neighborhood with skin stretched unnaturally, resembling a Japanese Noh mask. For those individuals, the skin is not an archive of their life’s history but rather a screen on which they project their fears about the future. They are desperately trying to reverse the time, even though their faces, frozen in a perpetual state of youth, no longer reflect who they truly are.

The skin is continuous throughout the body, and you won’t find perforated lines to guide your cuts. You need to decide where to make an incision. Where does the face start? The skin on the face is quite thin, so you won’t see much subcutaneous adipose tissue. Instead you will find the parotid glands, which look like pads of fat, under ears. Working on it requires a meticulous attention.

One facial expression muscle you might miss if you don’t know its location is the platysma. In many dissection workshops, it is mistakenly cut away along with subcutaneous adipose tissue. When I managed to save it from being partially cut away with the superficial fascia, I was fascinated. This extremely thin and broad muscle, which extends from the chin to the upper chest, resides between the sheets of subcutaneous adipose tissue. I can activate it and make it pop up. Despite being easy to miss during dissection, this muscle is not immune to modification: platysmaplasty, or neck lift, is a common procedure.

Once the skin and superficial fascia are removed from the face, the cadaver looks less personal and more like an anatomy chart.

We were standing in the lab, looking at three cadavers on dissection tables. As workshop participants, we were to choose a body to work on.

One was a slender woman with unnaturally perky breasts. Her nails were impeccably manicured, her hair full and glossy. She was beautiful.

Another was a heavily boned woman with a muscular build. “She must have been an avid hiker,” someone said.

The third was a woman of significant size.

She looked exactly like a good friend I had—someone who suffered from psychological and mental health issues and who had steadily gained weight until she was nearly immobile.

I felt a pang of sadness when I saw her body on the dissection table, and I experienced a slight aversion to standing at her station. No, I didn’t want to dissect her. I already knew it would be physically harder to remove her superficial fascia.

And yet, somehow, I ended up at her table.

As I began releasing her from the bounds of skin, I couldn’t help but project. I imagined the subcutaneous adipose tissue as emotional baggage she had accumulated over a lifetime, or maybe as a thick armor she wore to shield her psyche from the outside world. Under the tremendous weight, it felt like she had been collapsing inward.

The layer of superficial fascia we freed from her dermis was sizable—just as she had been with her skin on. We began removing the adipose tissue, as if freeing her from the tortured existence of living in a large body. It was hard work. The layer was easily three inches thick in her midsection.

As I worked, I thought about all the nerve endings embedded in that adipose tissue. She probably had ten times more nerve length than I do. This was a hypersentient state of being.

And then, beneath the adipose, her muscular structure appeared—and we were all astounded.

What had been hidden under that armor of fascia was not a collapsed, atrophied frame. She was robust. I had never seen an elderly female cadaver with such powerful muscles. Her legs were so strong she looked like she could’ve squeezed the life out of a big, bad cowboy. Her gracilis was not slender at all; it was substantial. None of us had ever seen gracilis muscles like that.

Her musculature had supported the weight of her adipose armor. She had the body of an Amazon warrior. There was no trace of wasting. She must have remained mobile and active until quite recently, carrying her physical existence bravely.

Internally, too, she was robust.

Her organs were intact. No calcified arteries, no arteriosclerosis. Her colon was six feet long, padded with a healthy amount of visceral fat. No fatty liver. No damaged kidneys. No fibrosis in the uterus. Her heart was beautiful. Her lungs were slightly darkened, but free of adhesions.

She was healthy.
Much healthier than I am.

The slender, model-like woman, on the other hand, had gone through hell. Once her skin and minimal adipose were removed, her body appeared almost transparent. Cancer had riddled her form—metastatic, likely starting from the breast. A chemotherapy port protruded from her chest.

She was a fighter, too.

I find myself reflecting on my projections.

You can’t tell who someone is just by looking from the outside.
The story you tell about them might not be their real story.

Somatic Awareness

Art of Body and Mind Maintenance

Face Reflected

The story you tell about them might not be their real story