Perceptions uncloaked: Body Image Project seeks to promote appreciation of beauty in many forms

Perceptions. For 17 years, Larry Kirkwood's endeavor, "The Body Image Project," has sought to encourage people throughout the country to re-evaluate their perceptions, to take a fresh look at what's beautiful and what's valued and why.

Through art -- nude plaster casts of bodies in all shapes and sizes, without faces and often painted in colors not normally associated with skin colors, like purple -- and through presentations centered around the art, Kirkwood's crusade is to encourage people to realize that the "human form just is. It's us who attach meaning to it."

Every other year, he's brought his sculptures and presentation to Cottey College; and did so again before a crowd of about 200 at Cottey on Thursday. In fact, one year, a professor asked students to critique the presentation, and devoted much of the text to critiquing his choice of clothing. "I think she didn't really get it," he said, but acknowledged the project gets a mixed-bag reaction. He hopes that most people at least hear that "each one of us is wonderfully unique and beautiful."

Meaning and values placed on body shape and type, gender, age and more are at the crux of Kirkwood's project. Outward appearances, he said, have nothing to do with talent, or sexuality, or whether a person will be a good employee -- it's who the person is inside that counts. "If I a gave you a beautifully wrapped gift, perfectly proportioned and decorated, and there was nothing inside, it wouldn't be worth much, would it?" he explained.

He related many tales he'd been told by those who've had their bodies cast, for a variety of reasons, and of those who'd shared the challenges perceptions about shape, size, age, color or gender have brought into their lives.

A woman, 6 feet, 2 inches tall, bright, funny, and well-educated, for example, had trouble getting past comments such as "How's the weather up there?" to the degree of rarely getting to have a conversation going past that. Kirkwood said he'd asked her how much she encountered that attitude, and her reply was five times -- that day. And it's an issue that doesn't impact women alone. Men of short stature have complained of difficulty in dating and in their careers. Very short women had reported similar difficulties. Ironically, Kirkwood also shared that women who enjoyed the body type and size most celebrated in the media had experienced anger from other women, just because of their body type.

The narrow image projected is pervasive, Kirkwood said, relating a story illustrating that point, about a student who'd asked why he didn't have more "real people -- you know, like the ones we see in magazines," represented in the exhibit.

"If we have to divide people into groups, why not divide them into, say, reliable and unreliable people. Those groups would each have some people from different races, men and women -- it wouldn't be just one" of the segments often unconsciously created in the mind based on outward appearances.

"You can't trust what's on the outside," and this obsession with image takes away from the person's accomplishments as well.

"Whether I'm going to be a good worker for you, or love you, or do you harm --that all comes from the inside. You can't see that from the outside," Kirkwood said, citing an example of a young man who was good-looking, charming, and well-dressed but in reality embodied terrible danger -- convicted serial killer Ted Bundy.

Kirkwood says he also seeks to challenge attitudes that place value on youth or gender, noting that although the gap seems to have closed somewhat, women are still paid less than white men in a similar job. Kirkwood guesses that high paying construction jobs generally held by men are disappearing, accounting for some of the closure of the gap.

Learning to see beauty in uniqueness, and to be self confident no matter your appearance or physical traits is something Kirkwood hopes listeners at his presentations will take away with them.

"Don't let anyone take away your potential. We learn to see things one way. Learn to see them another," Kirkwood said.