middlesex: of navels and the black hole
Music: Fever: Red Bedroom
The current controversy raging on blogs and discussion boards across the world orbits a navel: on the recent Macy's fireworks spectacular on July 4th, Mariah appeared to lipsync to one of her finely crafted ditties with the requisite exposed midsection. Although it is possible for women to achieve chiseled abs of monstrosity, it requires a tireless dedication to every variation of the crunch imaginable more than once a day for many, many months, and so it has been speculated by netizens that Carey's newly, well defined belly was an airbrushed canvas.
Although I admittedly do not know if Carey's abs were painted on, I believe it is likely, and because its Mariah Carey, we should now begin to consider whether we would like to lick them. What would it be like to run a tongue up and down that washboard, darting among the crevices and ultimately into the navel itself?
Of course, I'm only articulating the ab-ticular fantasy that resides in the popular imaginary (it's beginning marked by the arrival of the widely successful Abs of Steel video in 1991, succeeded by many sequels). More seriously, although the gesture of painting on abdominal muscles is amusing, it also tracks, on the one hand, the way in which the abdomen has become that obscure object of desire in the past decade. The belly has taken over the pride of place previously claimed by more prodigious bulges on the chest or below the waist; now, breasts and penis bulges merely "frame" the abdomen, like those frilly flower-wallpaper runners on suburban walls across the country. Despite recent attempts to domesticate and normalize the abdomen by Novartis, the makers of Zelnorm, in a series of television commercials depicting a parade of "normal, everyday" folks proudly lifting their shirts to reveal the words written on their bellies (e.g., "yes, there is help for your IBS" or whatever the hell), the fact remains that defined abdominal muscles are coded as the signature of good health and, ultimately, the ability to have good sexual intercourse (after all, its not the size that matters, but the motion of the ocean). The only thing Ms. Carey had going for her--as a superficial icon--was her public pride she demonstrated about her more typical womanly figure and smug in-your-face buxomness; in the current word-war with Madonna, she could play the trump card that she's naturally beautiful without all those crunches. But now, of course, she has succumbed to the fantasy of abdominal promise. How do we reckon with Carey's succumbing to the ab-ticular? How to reconcile her fall from abdominal normalcy into the clutches of the popular fashionista-abticularity?
One obvious way is, of course, to read Carey as an automaton and her belly as a barometer, tracking the ideological formations of the new century; we might thus locate the public abdomen as the new "public screen," a miniature television set, if you will, providing us images of popular consciousness. In this respect, for example, it makes sense so many people find the navel a rim for adornment. The "belly button ring," once symbolic of a defiant urban primitivism (a legacy of "punk"), is now the exotica of newfound nubility—a token of "youth."
The defined abdomen is similarly signiferous beyond the promise of sexual prowess, as it also represents the mobility of a code for masculine self-control to the female body: The original Abs of Steel video for women features a flat and strong tummy, but it remains coded "feminine"; the most recent version of that series depicts a more knobby female abdomen, but it does not resemble a "six pack" and, again, is coded feminine. Carey's airbrushed abdomen, however, is unquestionably masculine in appearance (the only, similarly defined abs were owned by Janet Jackson, who was bombarded with the centuries-old myth of having a rib removed to achieve them!). Carey's airbrushed abs are hyperbole for a desire to appear "in control" and, in this sense, represent an overdetermined, obsessive gesture that defies the association of the feminine with the hysterical. This is why the original advertisement of Zelnorm was targeted to women, who proudly displayed their more normal bellies as a sign that they are in control of their GI tracts, no longer a slave to the renegade turd that refused to exit on command. Hence, when sharing her feelings about being called a "diva" to a British reporter, Carey said: "“Well, my mother was an opera singer, so I’m comfortable with the old-fashioned meaning of the word diva. And if somebody said you were the cupcake diva of Manhattan, that would be OK too. But I’m not, like, this hysterical woman — I promise you!" Airbrushing is, hence, the token of a promise. The pierced belly is the promise of youth; the defined abdomen, the promise of self-control—and we should add, the beer belly a commitment to sloth and, the pregnant belly, the promise of life. Insofar as the navel is a reminder of origins, moreso than breasts, penises, vaginas, mouths, eyes, and assholes, the abdomen reflects our fears of social and literal death.
