Author Archives: nancy.murphy

The concept of having Body Integrity Disorder (BIID) is rather fascinating and somewhat scary. A person with BIID is not satisfied with their god given body and has the desire to become an amputee. For them having say, a right hand, just never felt right and caused intense anxiety. For this person, not having their right hand makes their body the way “it should have been”. This article is a very fascinating interview with “Jason”, a middle aged man who underwent a self amputation in order to rid himself of his right hand. Jason had to stage an accident involving massive power tools in order for his wife, insurance, and everyone in his life to believe that  losing his hand was not intentional (and also done in a way that was non-repairable). To this day, nobody knows the truth about Jason’s “accident” and people have even gone as far as raising money for him, which causes him immense guilt. This whole idea and BIID plays into the idea of stigma as a desire and choice. Generally, most people do not want to be stigmatized, especially the way people with missing limbs are. However, this man has taken his desire for what he deems normalcy (missing a hand) to a whole new level that is hard for me to comprehend. While I understand there is some type of mental disorder behind this action, I still think the entire idea of wanting to be stigmatized and wanting to be part of a sub-group in society bizarre. I almost feel bad for “Jason” who must live a double life, but then I realize this was his doing, and that this is what he wanted overall.

While in class we talked extensively about how Lombroso tried to catalog similar physical features in order to find out which features would make one more apt to be a criminal. He believed that features that were more reminiscent of apes or uncivilized cultures such as facial asymmetry were hints that someone could be distinguished from a non-criminal. While this theory is generally discredited today, new research seen here has given rise to find out the facial features that makes a black man more apt to be a CEO. A stunning 95% of CEO’s in America are white males. Researchers tried to figure out what physical characteristics alone (leaving out obvious other necessary traits such as dedication, hard work and education) black males usually attain in order to become CEO’s. In a sense this research is the exact opposite of Lombroso, instead of looking for physical characteristics that make one more apt to be a criminal, they are looking for characteristics that make one apt to be a successful business man. The study found that many of the black CEO’s possessed what they call “babyfaceness” or having attributes such as “a round face with a larger forehead, a small chin, full cheeks and other characteristics that are exaggerated in infants”. These traits made the black men appear less threatening to white people by bringing out emotions like warmth and tolerance. This finding is interesting in comparison to white CEO’s with similar babyfaceness who are perceived as being weak and incompetent. This study is relevant because it shows that tactics used by Lombroso are still being used and applied, but for different reasons. People indeed still make assumptions based on looks alone.