"This ain't build a bitch, you don't get to pick and choose, so if you want perfect I'm no good for you"
Except it was.
It was my first week of my masters degree, and all around campus I saw signs for “Body Lab”, a study that gave £10 in vouchers for participants in the science lab. I would love to say this was the start of a sci-fi Frankenstein moment, but it turned out to be more of a thought experiment.
I arrive on Saturday, my first week. A shock of cold air chasing my breath as a march around looking for the science department. I’m greeted by a man in a boxy suit and long hair, he seemed to be one of the scientists, but it wasn’t lost on me that his baggy 90s revival style gave him an “Igor the servant at the mad science lab” energy.
He introduces me to an older woman, mid 40s perhaps, hair tied back and a formal looking jumper. She seemed to tick all my preconceptions of what a scientist looked like, granting her a professional air of formality.
I was then lead behind the curtain into the immersive theatre area, in front of the daunting camera. In front of me stood a set of odd furniture pieces, limbs from mannequins, gothic accoutrements, and mysterious jewellery boxes which I’d taken as set dressing.
The head of the room had a 7 ft tall coat rack, draped with grey, lifeless torsos and limbs. There were a row of vacant grey masks, and a massage bed stood uniform in front of the strange car boot sale of parts. Somehow the disembodied parts were made completely sexless, completely neutral. They looked more like car repair parts than human anatomy.
My fellow team members appeared behind me a bit later, followed by Igor in the suit.
A woman in Victorian garb, and a wig that’s plastic shine seemed to ruin the illusion stumbled into action. She put down her book, adjusted her glasses, and began monologuing about losing connection with the person this mannequin used to be.
She gestured to the chalk boards on the side of the room to explain the rules. We were aiming for agreement, or consensus, however if there was an issue agreeing, we could play a game of chance to decide between two options, or allow the tombola to decide who chooses.
The timer gets tipped and we spring into discussion, shortly picking a medium size torso with a slight hourglass. Personally I’d have enjoyed playing with a the more rounded, larger torso, or the set of perfect “Ken Doll” artificial abs, however I was okay with this decision.
In a scene with a certain sterile charm, the grey head snapped onto the torso like a lego set, popping in with a firm KLUNK.
- - -
The next decision was the limbs. We were presented with six sets of limbs, each attached with a note about the lives they used to belong to. The implicit questions floated in the room, unspoken.
Was it moral to pick amputee limbs when building a person? Does knowing the limbs were responsible for birthing 30,000 babies make them more valuable? How much more or less valuable was it for the hands to belong to an artist vs a manual labourer? Wasn’t this all kind of eugenicsy?
I volunteered to read the tags.
These arms belonged to someone who helped birth 30,000 babies in a hospital.
these arms belonged to a best selling novelist.
These arms belonged to a famous painter.
The midwife’s arms had a wooden prosthetic on the left hand, and the right hand was missing from the elbow down.
This discussion was timed. We got to it quickly.
“I mean it's hard to pick [able bodied] limbs without getting eugenicsy?” I offered uncomfortably.
“so you think deliberately selecting for disabled traits isn’t also eugenicsy?” three taunted me, putting a challenge in the air to get more results.
There was a two minute discussion over the value of limbs, but as a group we leant towards the midwife, as the other, more creative jobs didn’t seem to hold the same productive value. Another curveball choice.
These legs belonged to an olympic athlete
these legs belonged to an delivery cyclist.
These legs belonged to someone who helped children cross the road.
The Olympic legs were disabled, the delivery cyclist’s legs were lean and athletic. The Lollypop lady legs were thicker, potentially more feminine hips? They in my mind skewed older. The discussion once again rattled on, but the general consensus was for the delivery driver legs.
Then, after what felt like a real life cutscene with the mad scientist actress, we were delivered the jewellery boxes.
- - -
There, sat in these ornate jewellery boxes, were six sets of prophetic vaginas, and two sets of penises, each molded in an industrial, neutralising grey. In hindsight variety of penises would have been more interesting. Perhaps something about circumcision?
I made a joke about how it reminded me of Grindr, the gay dating app in which mystery genital pics were commonplace.
The discussions were more difficult now. I asked if we knew what plumbing the fictional homunculus had, as we wouldn’t want to create someone with an intersex condition.
“Why not? Nature does all the time?” challenged 3. This was becoming a theme, but he wasn’t wrong.
We debated the merits and quirks of presenting male or female, and decided to let a figurative coin toss decide. The mad scientist returned from her perch, producing a small marble and placing it into a roulette dish.
Red for male. Black for Female.
Male won, and the penises were debated. There was a general agreement that although one of the penises was smaller, it was more symmetrical. As a connoisseur I tried not to let my slight drool become noticed. I’d been single too long.
- - -
The next question took me off guard. Would we want this figure to have breasts? A question that would’ve been neutral ten years ago but had become more controversial over the years.
One of the undergrads (2?) half joked that having a trans woman would be “fierce.” Then once the ice was broken, the real discussion began. We all talked of dysphoria, and whether this person was a trans woman or a cis man.
Would it be more traumatising to wake up with double Ds if you were a cis man? Or in a cis man’s body if you were a trans woman? Would we be responsible for making this person’s life worse in a controversial time if we made them trans? We concluded on leaving the breasts off, if this fictional person was built wrong, there was an expert mad scientist on staff to velcro the tits back on.
Our figure was hoisted up onto a stand, and we were into the race portion of the exercise.
- - -
Hair colour was decided from a box of wigs, eyes were found in yet another antique jewellery box, and race was a difficult one. The skintones were represented with silk fabrics – probably best to keep it hypothetical instead of producing the silence of the lambs.
There was a lot of discussion about this, and interestingly privilege never came up. When I mentioned it, participant 7 – a bright eyed and energetic black 22 year old girl with a graphic tee and the kind of bleach blonde dreads you’d give a superhero – shrugged and simply suggested that given the diversity of the room it was already agiven.
While that’s probably true it didn’t help the study.
We landed on a mixed race lad with a manbun and hetrochromia. There was also an interesting discussion on which kind of brown eye was the universal, and whether there was such a thing as a neutral eye colour. The implication seemed to be that if you woke up in a new mystery body you’d want it to be something tan in a racially ambiguous way so that any confusion in identity could be resolved.
We ended up with a giant mixed race man, who wore a man bun and was missing an arm. On my write up, I named him pascal, after a name a classmate used. I would later meet a man who met that description (minus the amputation and the heterochromia of course).
I left that study, a £10 voucher richer, with lots of pictures of the set design, and a whole school of fictional ethical dilemmas swimming through my head, the start to a strong weekend.
