A Naughty Nasal

By Cade Richmond (Gallatin BA ’20)

I have grown accustom to frequent and unwelcome bloody noses. In both my childhood and adulthood, I have had to navigate situations in which my natural bodily processes transform my body into a public spectacle. One may consider this an absurd reading of my circumstances, but I believe there is truly something to unpack about the reactions that others have to my nose bleeds. I would say that I must deal with a nosebleed about once a day and these leakages often happen in public and institutionalized spaces. I am not equipped to deal with these nosebleeds as I lack a travel pack of tissues and have grown
accustomed to moving through spaces with blood dripping down my face. People approach me with haste to check on me, ask if I need assistance, or to alert me to the obvious fact that I am covered in blood. Given my predisposition, I say thank you or, not frequently, shrug off the person. Much of this depends on how I perceive their intention in approaching my body. I feel as though the nosebleed leaves my body vulnerable to public consumption. I become an open person that people feel the need, or the obligation, to approach. Though I have no ability to read minds, I try to read other people’s body language and tone of voice in “handling” me. My friends laugh, squeal, and scream in disgust. Women who I do not know often treat me with kindness or avoid my path to allot the space needed to manage my own body. What I have noticed though is the strangers who approach me the most frequently and with the most apathy are men, often white and who appear to subscribe to normative masculine gender performance. This seems peculiarly fitting given conceptions about the white savior who must take it upon themselves, though with indifference, to regulate and to correct the physically queered body. This project involves a series of selfies taken on an iPhone which show the photographer, me, with a bleeding nose. The purpose of the series is dual fronted. The first relies on the medium of the photos, a selfie taken on one’s own phone. With people approaching me without my consent, I believe that taking a selfie mid-nosebleed allows me to recapture a degree of agency. I transform myself into my own spectacle so that I may enjoy and relish in the activity that many find revolting. The second front hinges upon the audience’s perception of the selfies. What does one feel when viewing this spectacle through a mediated lens? Why do people feel the way they do about my bloody nose and how are these feelings shaped by cultural understandings of propriety in publicly shared spaces? Why are my bloody noses so offensive and what do people’s reactions confer about the politics of the body in public versus in private? This a project about the body, space, agency, publicness, and feeling. I hope that people view this project and leave consterned with their own attitudes towards the politics of appropriateness and the rights of individuals to their own bodies.