Kerry Downey
(my Flux friends made this video for me for my benefit party, thanks Shuffy, Jean, Morgan, Paul, Chen, Mikey!)
Being from sunny South Florida, Kerry has the disposition of a tender, curmudgeonly, cardigan-sporting geriatric patient. She lives as if each day was her last, reveling in the sunshine of her mind’s eye. She prefers tea over coffee, music over sound, friends over enemies, her studio over the street. A Bard graduate of the Fine Arts, a current MFA candidate at Hunter College, list-maker extraordinaire, a skeptic of skepticism, a lover of all synchronicities, a Leo with a Cancer moon, and a lock on her studio so she can moonwalk with no interruptions. Despite being lactose-intolerant, she is easily one of the cheesiest people alive.
Kerry curated Flux Factory’s What the Book?, co-curated NOVEL, Works on Paper, and Grizzly Proof, and has participated in numerous other shows and collaborative projects.
##########################
CURRENTLY I am preparing for something totally awesome: top surgery (June 20th). Should you be curious, the details are below. It’s important to understand that this event has been made public for the primary reason of fundraising and the secondary reason of raising awareness. DONATIONS WELCOME! Let me be frank, I need to raise a whole hell of lot more money. Anyone who digs my art and donates can e-mail me and I’ll mail you a print. Seriously.
Questions and comments: Kerry@fluxfactory.org
A Brief History of My Boobs
By Kerry Downey
Titties in the Wind
As I sit under a blooming cherry blossom, I think back to the fountain of my youth. Ahh yes, the early days. There once was a Kerry who ran swift and light below South Florida streetlights, across green manicured soccer fields, through Canadian forest. I was as fast and often faster than most boys. I could really kick your ass and probably did. Shit, I had a quarter pipe, got every Metallica album in my Christmas stocking, and made Skid Row music videos on my roof. And then slowly some welts grew on my chest. Then quicker, quicker until these nodules became golf balls became oranges and well, you get the idea. Slowly a stitch grew in my side when I ran. I couldn’t stand up straight anymore and was suddenly humbled beneath the growing weight of my womanboob. The density of this change with the unholy ebb and flow of hormonal nonsense hit a sensitive Kerry with a great vengeance. Boy was I furious. These motherfuckers would not stop growing. So I nightly prayed to the Boob Goddess to undo such growing endowment. But she was a generous deity and with every unkind ounce, my body arched further downward. The humility my family raised me with manifested itself physically into a curmudgeonly, geriatric posture. I tried to keep playing soccer but I was slow and my titties in the wind were hard on my small frame. I was told to stand up straight and push this unwieldy bust out into the world. I was told to be unashamed of the female form. I had no problem with this form fitting other women, but I felt unmoved by my own majestic mountains. So I rejected such notions of proper posture as triumphantly as I rejected the school ritual of fluoride swishing. Fuck no.
Ironically, the same time I struggled to keep up in soccer, at the height of puberty’s evil, my mother lost her breasts to cancer. Double mastectomy with no reconstructive surgery. It’s some twisted shit when you find yourself jealous of your Mom’s surgically flattened chest. It wasn’t until much later that I could understand my mother’s incredible courage.
When my boobs got some lovin’
Well, I gave up sports, much to my dismay, and became an artist. What other options were there? I went to an artsy fartsy high school and met cute girls who wanted to touch my tits. I was fortunate enough to find that my first love loved me back and loved my boobs even more. Over the years such kind ladies encouraged tighter shirts and feminist notions of self love. Despite a growing fanbase for my chest, I still resented them. I would wear the same ugly, yellowing sports bras from Sears to avoid the shameful shopping for newer, more stylish ones. I was safer in the bra and underwear section of Sears where only South Florida geriatrics would gawk at me. I would (and still) never hang out braless (even around these women who swore their love to me) for fear my breasts will drip into lap into a puddle of fat. Sleeping naked is also not an option as it inspires nightmares of blobby boob creatures swallowing me up in their voluptuousness. These sweet ladyfolk of both my high school and Bard college days showed various stylings of love and encouragement but at the end of the day, it all felt rather insufficient. Even with the best mood lighting of candles and starlight could not make these jugs look good on me. They’re just not sexy because they’re just not me.
Androgyny, baby
The physical and psychological weight of these things is not easily measured. I have found that in discussing my boobs, many people understand things like back and neck pain. People see how having weight on your chest is difficult to carry around. Many people also understand that it’s annoying to have people look at the one part of your body you wish would disappear. But what most people seem confused by, is why exercise, back braces, physical therapy, and the right attitude do not cure this boob dilemma. The other side of this matter is rather abstract for many people. I want to be androgynous.
As a little kid I was mercilessly picked on (as most of us were for one thing or another) for my androgyny. Are you a girl or a boy was so common that after awhile I learned to have some fun with it. “No bitch, I’m your worst nightmare.” I learned to talk back and speak loud. I never defended my femaleness as this seemed not only beside the point, but also incorrect. Was I a girl or a boy? I internalized such questions and grew comfortable operating in the spaces in between. I was angry when I lost this power with big boobs even though it alleviated a great deal of confusion on the world’s behalf. It’s strange to think that one would want to return to this place of androgyny, but it is not a place of shame. It is who I am most comfortable being.
Androgyny is a tricky thing though. What am I even talking about? What’s funny is that the definitions of androgyny describe it as either having both male and female (masculine or feminine) characteristics OR having neither. So what is it that I want to be, neither or both? Can I be both neither and both or neither both nor neither? Wait, I’m getting confused. Fuck this, I just want to wear cute little tank tops and run fast again.
The Decision
Many of my peoples know that I have been thinking about breast reduction and top surgery for many years. Recently, with greater queer and trans activism and awareness, and with advanced technologies and surgeons, surgery became more and more realistic. But there was a recent moment at the doctor that made top surgery an urgent necessity. I was laying on the Dr.’s table to have a cist examined. My tits were covered in cold Vaseline while some kind of sonogram machine was being smooshed against them when tears started flowing down my face. It was in this moment that I decided that I was not going to spend the rest of my life being inspected, tested, felt up, pressured and paranoid about the breast cancer that is both sides of my family tree. So the removal of this flesh is not only to relieve back pain, to relieve some of the psychological weight, to find a more androgynous, gender-queer body, to be able to wear the clothes I want to wear, to be able to run again, but also, alas to free my body from the years of traumatic breast examination that is uncomfortable emotionally and physically. I consider this elective mastectomy a kind of solidarity with my mother as well as with the trans and queer communities as large.
So there you have it. Boobs be gone. I wanted to get up from that freezing cold Dr.’s table right then saying, “fuck you, get off my tits you fucking mean people!” However, I kept it inside and I let them finish their job. I didn’t stop crying until I got on the subway. But at this point these sweet tears were those of joy because in that walk from the Elmhurst Hospital to the 7 train, my decision was made that the time was now.
The Process
I didn’t think very long about a breast reduction because with very little brain effort I knew that it is not simply chest comfort that I am interested in, but, like my mother’s mastectomy, a removal of all that is potentially cancerous, metaphorically and otherwise. While I am not interested in passing as a man, I am also not interested in completely passing as a woman. Any size boob is just too much boob for me. It made sense at this point to research top surgery and to align myself with queer and trans folks rather than to think about this process in terms of breast reduction. With some research I found the right surgical procedure: bilateral subcutaneous mastectomy with nipple grafts—which means I keep my nipples (although I’ve been considering following my friend Annie’s suggestion of just having them tattooed on).
At this point I began to talk to every friend who would listen about my desire for top surgery. I started to reach out to my queer peoples from Bard and Hunter and have been in constant tit talk with my Flux Factory folk for many months. Being that the cost of the surgery is $7500, I had to make this private process public by eliciting help from basically every friend I have. It hasn’t been easy or entirely comfortable but by making this experience public, it has been an opportunity to build my community, talk about these things that, while deeply personal, are incredibly important to me. From finding the right surgeon to the organizing of the fundraiser, this has been a real communal effort. I have been pleasantly surprised to find my friends and family very supportive (with few exceptions).
Once I found the right surgeon for me, I had to make a down payment, fill out shitloads of forms, meet with my Primary Care Physician to ensure he’s willing and able to deal with my tubes post operation, and prepare for the blood tests, medication, and month of recovery, (and here is where it gets interesting) find a therapist willing to write a letter stating that s/he has diagnosed me with “Gender Dysphoria.”
Harrowing.
So what the fuck is Gender Dysphoria? It turns out that legally, to have top surgery, which is technically a transgender (female to male or F to M) surgery, law requires that one must prove their sanity. Gender Dysphoria is a gender identity disorder where a person is uncomfortable with the gender they were born as. Psychologically speaking, the disorder has a history of being viewed as a mental illness. This is a diagnosis that labels non-traditional bodies psychologically unstable. Such diagnosis renders transsexuality, and transqueer people pathological and has been a way to monitor even young children displaying early signs of homosexuality. Thankfully many doctors have moved past such hysteria.
Do you think that women who have breast implants need letters from their therapists? Hell no. Psychiatric evaluation is one of many forms of legislation of queer bodies. This process of needing a letter relates to the longstanding history of criminalization and marginalization of homosexuality, trans people, and those who do not comply with the heteronormative. So I have to sit and talk to a completely ignorant therapist once a week to obtain a letter that is not only a lie, but a total double standard in relation to cosmetic surgery (which, if it hasn’t been made clear already, I am not having). I believe there is a distinction between progressive uses of surgery that weaken gender authority and cosmetic surgery which often reasserts gender stereotypes and the gender binary. In addition to making my physical body more comfortable, I am interested in overthrowing notions of compulsory gender by breaking down the lines that are drawn between female/male, homosexual/heterosexual.
Judith Butler sees a call for elective surgery as one of the many important ways to “challenge the principle that a natural dimorphism should be established or maintained at all costs. Intersex activists work to rectify the erroneous assumption that every body has an inborn ‘truth’ of sex that medical professionals can discern.” She also makes clear that one cannot remake the world so that the subject is the maker. Identities and bodies are constantly being negotiated in relation to and with an awareness of the power that comes through and at the cost of recognition (or passing). By believing one has godlike powers, one only refuses the ways we are constituted. My body works in collaboration with the world around me and its many possibilities. Surgery saves lives. It can also make lives more viable.
Freedom, I won’t let you down
Speaking of viability, let me take a moment to talk about freedom. The removal of this excess weight is a physical act wherein pain transforms into a kind of pleasure and a symbolic weight is being lifted. I believe this act can be innovative in that the notions of humanness are being expanded to open potentials for safety, love, and dignity. An old friend recently told me I was cutting off so many options and possibilities in my life. I told her I was doing the opposite.
This proactive process is not an overnight quick fix to my life’s problems. It is an ongoing experience that relates as much to aging an illness as it does to bodily plasticity and flexibility. This freedom that I seek will not be found the second I wake from anesthesia but will be a continuous struggle to both seek the healthiest body and simultaneously work to accept the current physical space I inhabit. I consider this surgery a great privilege that is the result of a fantastic family, an especially righteous Mom, and an incredible support network of friends. With this privilege, I believe comes a responsibility to keep an open heart and mind and to allow for a greater promise of love in my life. This is not idealism. It is hard work.
Thank you for your generous support and interest.
Love,
Kerry
Special Thanks to Galapagos for hosting my fundraiser.
Thanks to my Mom, who truly is the best Mom ever. Thanks to my Flux Factory people for all your generosity. Mostly though, thanks for listening and laughing. Thanks to Ser Rodriguez for his wisdom and openness. Thanks to Ka-Man and the Dirtypop kids for your support and connections . Thanks to all the entertainment! Stefany, Chiara, Marla Hooch and Josh Sparber—you all totally fucking rule. Thanks to Tubby for the most hilarious flyer. Thanks to Angela for our amazing conversations and for joining me on the journey. Thanks to Aya for decorations, ideas, and friendship. Thanks to all my new peoples at Hunter—let’s be friends forever. Thanks to those of you who have come near and far to support me. What comes around goes around.
