Interesting comment. Another way to think of it would be that each gender is posed doing what it does best. Males are stronger and faster, only women reproduce. Both have their own special power to the other sex. Men have their role in reproduction, but only women give birth, and men can run faster. So for the purposes of a public display, they use the traditional stereotypes to display the bodies.

Yeah, you'd need strength and speed to wield that conductor's baton.

It reminds me of an old ADAM: The Human Body computer program I had once. The prototypical human body was male, and the female was apparently an aberration.

Thanks for posting this. I haven't seen the exhibit, but I find this a bit maddening too.

Fine, I'll give you that women's football isn't standard, but in addition to the existence of the NWBA there is the issue of what they choose to show the bodies doing. The proportion of women in the exhibit to men in the exhibit was not around 50:50 as it is in the general populace, yet even if you want to show physical exertion, many women and girls play sports as well, and many excel at them.

It's kinda strange that men are the basic model for the human body when you consider that human life all has an X chromosone. In a way it would make more sense to see men as the exception since they're the ones with the "odd" Y chromosone. That, and in fetal development, I think I've read that we're all essentially female in structure until a certain point where the sex-difference begins to develop.

I work at a hospital and part of my job is taking dead bodies to the morgue. Some people I work with don't have any problem taking down an adult but will refuse to take down a child or baby or fetus.

Oh wow, yeah let me tell you how I went to the exhibit to see a nude female for my pleasure, just gave me an erection and had to masturbate right after seeing it. Come on are you kidding? They are placed in a sexual nature? You are just looking way to deep into this, it's an exhibit, do you complain when you go to an art gallery and you see a painting of a female in a picture with the wind blowing her hair about laying on a sandy beach? No I don't think so, get over it

A couple of observations -
-Once the skin and fat are removed from the human figure both males and females look unbelievably similar. We share the same muscles and bones, there probably isn't a huge need to provide variation.
-Sure women could have been used for some of the sporting figures, but I'd like to see them use a man to show reproduction, it is inevitable that a woman was posed to show development of a fetus.
-Perhaps the decision on whether to use male of female figures came from other influences. For all you know women may be less likely to donate their bodies to this kind of science, or there may be difficulties working with the female form. For example there would be more work involved to show the pectoral muscles on a woman. What I am suggesting is maybe practicality made the decisions here, not sexism.
-The reason for additional signs on the fetus display is to prevent people who find complaint with everything (nudge nudge) from complaining that they weren't warned. People can find some morale argument with about almost ANYTHING and you are a perfect example of this.
You went into that exhibit expecting and prepared to come to the conclusion that you did.

Even if you are right about it all, do you think that complaining will do anything to further womens rights.
A man would do something about it, a woman would complain. ;)

They DO have female forms in sporting positions;
The Archer, The Swimmer, The Yoga Lady, The Figure Skater, etc. are all female.
You are being silly.

You're SO RIGHT! I saw this exhibit a couple weeks ago and had the exact same complaint. I felt hurt and angry and frustrated that an exhibit supposedly designed to help popularize science and the scientific way of thinking could play into stereotypes so blatantly.

There were tons of children there, too, and I actually heard a young child ask 'but where are the girl-skeletons?' and her dad shushed her. I asked one of the volunteers in lab coats (I think they were medical students) why they had only male bodies in there and she told me they had male bodies as they're bigger and therefore better to show detail (e.g. capillaries, etc.). This seemed like hogwash - all the places where detail was necessary, they'd included magnifying glasses within the exhibit wall.

And the shocking part about the foetus 'special exhibit' - my reaction was to see the six-week foetus and think "this is smaller than a pea! Is that what the big debate is about???? They're putting this little thing's existence vs. a fully grown adult woman's?" - but everyone leaving comments seemed to have the opposite reaction, leaving comments like "this exhibit changed my life, I will never have an abortion in my life no matter what" etc..

I'm going to ignore the blatant misogyny in many of the previous comments, because I'm not going to waste my energy convincing those who won't be convinced that they are despicable human beings.

What I did want to bring up was the humans rights issues no one seems to have mentioned. There was a fairly large controversy (which only boosted sales) about getting the permission to use Chinese bodies, not having the individuals in the exhibits consent themselves, and larger-scale issues like fostering an industry of selling dead bodies in China. This is not to put the blame on China, per se, but to look at US corporations like Body Works' and their actions, as well as our actions as consumers going to such exhibits. Not that activism by boycotting is ever enough, but it's a start.

Here's one of the better articles about it: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07172/795948-115.stm

Haha get over yourself

From what I've heard (I saw the exhibit in Vegas), the exibit itself has some controversy surrounding where it got its bodies from.

Most of the bodies in the exhibit are Asian and are typically former prisoners (for various offences) from China. The question is, then, whether the bodies were actually donated to science, or the choice was made for them.

Perhaps this has more to do with race and with where and how they got their bodies (men's prisons in China) than it does with gender and sex, though I do have to agree the pose of the one woman is a bit bizarre (they didn't have that one in Vegas).

I just missed the Bodies exhibit when they had it at the Museum of Science in Boston. However, I did notice something interesting (that, come to think think of it, shouldn't be that odd in the first place). In the Human body exhibit area they had a clear female human body showing organs, veins, arteries, etc. They used the female body as the "default" for this, which I don't see very often (unless it something specific to reproduction and pregnancy). I lost the picture of it, otherwise I would post a link to it. Also, they used skeletons in several displays (riding a bicycle and other things), and I may be wrong, but by the size of the hips, I'm fairly sure they weren't all male.

These displays of female cadavers are beyond offensive. I'm an Asian female and I wouldn't mind donating my dead body to science, but the thought that my dead body could be posed in a sexual manner for the male gaze is horrifying. It's horrible that without my knowledge, my body could be sexually objectified and it could be used to further sexism.

I'm pretty sure they didn't have the women's consent to have their dead bodies sexualized and sexually explicit.

I saw this exhibit (or a similar one - I think it was called "BodyWorlds") in 2006 and was also upset by the markedness of the female body. If I remember correctly, the one I saw had a couple of females doing sporty things in addition to the preggo ones, but still many more men. And while the men were titled things like "Basketball Star" or "Rower," the women always had a Miss or Ms. on the front, like "Ms. Ice Skater." A man is a basketball player; a woman is a FEMALE basketball player.

Actually, that always bothered me in high school, too. The boy's sports teams were just the Truckers (yes, our mascot was the Truckers), but the girls were the Lady Truckers. One of our rival schools was the Redmen and, no, not the Redwomen, the Lady Redmen. Ha. I understand that women's interscholastic sports came around after men's, but isn't it time we got rid of the implication that men playing sports is the default?

It's Hasty Generalization time!

1: "All the adult bodies that appear in the exhibit were donated by volunteers who knew what they would be used for, and the donors' identities have been protected. He does not accept the bodies of infants. Von Hagens said the infants he plastinated for the exhibit were acquired from hospitals and medical schools. They were all preserved before 1935, he said."

So he worked with what he had, he didn't just go down to the corpse store and pick up a twelver of dude bodies.

http://www.beachbrowser.com/Archives/eVoid/April-2001/Plasticized-Corpse-Exhibit.htm

2: Fewer women than men donate organs/tissue period, so the numbers would be unbalanced by that fact alone. Someone could just as easily be indignant about fewer women donating tissue.

http://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/latestData/rptData.asp

3. Maybe they would have liked the pregnant woman posed as if taking a dump? The stretch of the "pin up" pose as you refer to it offers a great view of her abdomen and the fetus at eye level. This body could just as easily be doing yoga.

I agree that it would not make much sense to be indignant about it, that was my point - its just a case of numbers being a bit higher in the case of one as opposed to the other.

Van Hagens DID have a limited pool to use, the pool of people that had agreed to this specific use of their remains when still alive because it is not the same as simply using cadavers donated for medical studies. Unless there is prior knowledge of the make up of that group, to assume that Van Hagens chose only men on purpose is to ascribe preconceived notions to him based on his gender - the exact thing that this blog post is against in the first place.

I hate those exhibits! They give me both a case of the jibblies and a sense of outrage.

Also, sociologically, shouldn't you talk about how these people are now just objects, and not people? How they are dehumanized in death? And how most of them are from China?

Wow, I was very surprised to read some of the comments about the absurdity of this post. I mean, while I don't expect a man to fully understand the marginalization women face everyday (difficult, when you've never experienced it), I certainly expected the above posters to have some awareness of social trends.

This is the sort of imbalance I would expect to see in the media, but not in science. I was mildly convinced that perhaps more men donated their bodies than women, but Leslie put that notion to rest.

Also, the idea that the men are displayed because they are bigger (more muscular, as I understand it), is irrelevant. The cadaver we used in my AP course was that of a 86 year old man, who hadn't walked in several years, at least. His muscles were quite atrophied, but we were still able to identify all of them.

Finally, I just want to say that, although I'm not a passionate feminist, I think it's great that you posted this. The idea that "men would do something and women would complain" is idiocy because the number one problem with gender issues is that so few people (women included) are aware of them. The BEST thing to do at this point is bring attention to the imbalances. My fiance, who is extremely loving and respectful, is still struggling to understand my experiences. It's not something he has been taught to question. Most men thing women are just naturally more demure and submissive. That is a product of the socialization of men and women, and the best way to change it is to understand the dynamic and socialize your children differently.

Thank you for posting this, and taking action to make our culture more equal.

Wow.. Way way too much misandry here. The reason why the women were in the reproductive part is because they are the only sex that can have babies.

I agree that a proportionality in sex would have been a nice concept, yet all that really matters is that from an educational perspective we are provided with what we need. If this is 50 men and 2 women, or 50 women and 2 men, then does it really matter? If i could get a notion of the human body from a female or a male basketballer/yoga/rower/mother than i wouldn't care.

We're not trying to fill a quota here. And the exhibition organizers weren't trying to make a point that men are more important in society than women. They were just trying to put on the best exhibition they could with the resources that they had.

I think some of the people here are reading too much into this story, and using it as a discussion point to further their own sexist views. Oh sure, we'll defend our respective sexes rights to equality, while at the same time berating and belittling members of the other sex.

Typical hyprocrisy.

I don't see where this post belittles men. And even if 50 men and 2 women or 50 women and 2 men would have made the scientific point about the bodies, the larger problem is how the gross inequality is generally ignored or not seen as a problem in the first place. Male privilege?

When I saw this exhibit, I noticed that most, if not all, of the female bodies still had nipples. The rest of the skin had been cut away to expose muscles and organs, but the nipples and areolae remained. Male bodies, on the other hand, had no nipples, just pectoral muscles. What gives?

So many holier-than-thou commenters about how the exhibit is being misrepresented, there were really more women's bodies when you saw it so she must be wrong, etc.

"Bodies" and "Body Worlds" aren't the same exhibit. Von Hagen's exhibit is Body Worlds; Bodies is the one described here. "Bodies" is the one with ongoing controversy about whether they use Chinese prisoner's bodies; "Body Worlds" has been cleared of that charge. Considering they are entirely separate enterprises, it's quite believable that one involves more women's bodies in more different poses. Jeeze.

Wikipedia:
"New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo concluded his investigation of Premier, finding "The grim reality is that Premier Exhibitions has profited from displaying the remains of individuals who may have been tortured and executed in China. Despite repeated denials, we now know that Premier itself cannot demonstrate the circumstances that led to the death of the individuals. Nor is Premier able to establish that these people consented to their remains being used in this manner. Respect for the dead and respect for the public requires that Premier do more than simply assure us that there is no reason for concern. This settlement is a start."[19]

In contrast to BODIES...The Exhibition, the first organization to use plastination with human bodies, "Body Worlds", maintains a more rigorous standard for donation and keeps appropriate records of the donors. A commission set up by the California Science Center in Los Angeles in 2004 confirmed von Hagens' commitment to ethical practices, and published its Summary of Ethical Review (Body Worlds: An Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies Summary of Ethical Review 2004/2005 [1]). The commission matched death certificates and body donation forms, and verified informed legal consent of the bodies in the exhibitions. However, to ensure the privacy and anonymity promised to body donors, Von Hagens' Institute for Plastination maintains a firewall between body donors' documentation and finished plastinated bodies. To date, more than 9,000 individuals have pledged to donate their bodies to the Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg, in Germany."

There is a recent Body World Exhibit in Singapore (which is still running). What has changed is that there were female bodies in a variety of poses:
1. Kneeling with 2 doves
2. Standing in a neutral position beside a male body to demonstrate the Human Body
3. Dancing with another male body.

As I am also a student of Sociology, I didn't find anything as biased as the bodies in the post above. Although maybe the one with the doves?

I am apalled at the lack of perspective some people (mostly men) are showing here. The whole point of this post is not if the exhibit poses an aggressive threat on female integrity. The point is that the male sex remains the norm in our society, and the fact that these people are complaining about this post just reinforces our complaint. It should not be "no big deal". How many diagrams of reproductive, circulatory, respiratory & lymphatic systems feature a male body over a female one? It may not be a problem on its own, but it definitely is a symptom of an inherently sexist society. And men's blindness just shows privilege, not women's inability to "lighten up".

Complain a little more. I get your point but this is ART. You get to see what the artist chooses to show you, for all you know the art is a statement about how women are reduced to their gender role and he's using the exhibit in protest.

Honestly, I'm all for equal rights and I think it's crap that ANYONE can get paid less than anyone else for doing the same job or that some are excluded completely based on their personal circumstance (gender, age, skin color etc.). However, I think "activists" go out of their way to find examples like this one and rather than complain about how you aren't treated fairly, the better path may be to work with what you have and not complain about it. I realize that not everyone is treated equally and it's a big flaw in our society but it's not going to get better writing bitchy articles about social injustices at your local art museum. It's going to come from hard work and proving again and again that you're just as capable as your male counterpart.

I think you're right that everyone deserves to be treated equally but I'm so sick of hearing people complain about things like this all the time. I think you have more power to change it than you realize and this is NOT the way to do it. Quit complaining, you have more opportunity than women in history ever have and make it better for future generations.

someone told me many of the bodies were donated by prisoners. does anyone think that they may have had many more male prisoners and therefore bodies donated? i haven't done more research. thoroughly articulate and poignant article, nonetheless.

I'm shocked that people are being so defensive about this exhibit, and being so boldly sexist. I mean really? How are you not at least a little skeeved by a dead pregnant woman, with no skin, that's posed like a pinup shot? Why does the sexualization of a dissected corpse not creep you out?

I have a theory. It's because images of women as sex objects are so pervasive, that its become the norm. Women are sexualized so often that it has become embedded in our brains that women just ARE sexual, and nothing else. I can think of a dozen other ways to pose a body to display a fetus in womb. The fact that they chose that one, is disturbing. Even if there were other women posed doing things like running, or doing yoga, or other physical activities, this is still an extra disgusting example of women being sexually objectified. Almost literally, as she's now a plasticized corpse, and therefore little better than an inanimate object.

Nice article! I noticed this stuff as well in Los Angeles...not to mention that only the female cadavers were given nipples, increasing their sexualization in comparison to the male cadavers. So weird.

When the exhibit was shown in Chicago, there were two placards describing the fetuses, identical in every way except that one referred to embryos and one referred to 'unborn babies.' Better to piss everyone off than, I don't know, decide in favor of science in a science museum, right? Though for the record, it might just be a case of incredible curatorial indecisiveness: in front of the exhibit, one sign offered complimentary audio tours, while another offered "complementary" audio tours!

Maria  I found the exhibit to be very interesting

There's at least some reason for the disparity in the sexes, if not the sexism. Most of the bodies are of Chinese prisoners or homeless (people who didn't have families to claim their bodies). So, relatively fewer women end up being plasticized, and presumably those that do are reserved for the "reproduction" section. 

Silly that 'people' are being halved.

Thin-skinned feminista is thin-skinned. What else is new?

E.X.A.C.T.L.Y.

Have you ever been to school for massage or medicine or anything like that or gone to a clinic and wondered why tf every single picture of the human body is using a male's body?

Acupuncture charts, human body inside and out, all male. Literally can't find a single therapist or doctor using female charts. Which is so fucking bullshit because guess what?

FEMALES HAVE VAGINAS AND MALES HAVE PENISES. IF A DOCTOR ONLY STUDIES HOW TO GIVE ACUPUNCTURE TO A MAN'S BALLS HOW IS HE/SHE GOING TO STUDY HOW TO GIVE ACUPUNCTURE TO A WOMAN'S LABIA!!!!!