Wonder Woman

Abstract

Wonder Woman Constance Adler (bio) There is a scar in the center of my chest. A whitish and shiny round patch, the size of a silver dollar, the scar does not match the surrounding skin. It does not blend with its environment; it cannot not hide. Located just above what we might generously refer to as my "cleavage," this scar marks the place where a hard pad pressed into my skin for the months that I wore a back brace, known as the Milwaukee brace, when I was fourteen years old. Here is a picture of the brace: Imagine a contraption that clasped my head in a metal loop, secured tight against my chin and the back of my skull. Metal posts connected the head restraint to a hard, plastic girdle that encased my pelvis and was locked shut at the back with straps, so tight that it left deep-red indentations in the soft flesh of my backside. Once in place, the whole thing resembled a medieval instrument of torture. I came to think of it as a cage that I carried around with me all the time. It was hideous, and it made me hideous. While I was in the brace, it was impossible for me to move from hips to head. The cage held me in a rock-rigid grasp. I could not sleep curled up in a protective knot, as was my habit, but had to lie on my back like a corpse on a slab. I could not bend or turn side to side or look up or down. I could walk, but it was difficult to eat or talk because my chin kept hitting the metal loop around my head when I opened my mouth. I could not tip [End Page 111] my head to look down to the food on the plate in front of me and had to guess at what I might be forking into my mouth. I could go to school, and spend time with my friends, but I was always caged. I had to wear extra-large clothes to fit over the brace, and its hard unsightly lumps protruded through my clothes instead of the normal soft form of my girl's body. I could not see my own feet or reach down to tie my own shoelaces. If my shoe came untied at school, I had to ask a friend to tie it for me. Some kids asked if I'd been mangled in a car accident. The clinical purpose of the Milwaukee brace was to maintain my girl's body in this unyielding position for a year until my back and shoulders grew accustomed to a center plumb line. Then I'd be released, ideally as a more perfect girl. One day I'll have to find out why Milwaukee gets credit for this instrument of torture. What I can tell you now is that my parents put me into this brace for reasons that were a complete mystery to me. They had threatened me with a back brace if I didn't stand up straight, a threat that I did not take seriously. At the dinner table, my father enforced the posture requirement by hitting the back of my head. Slouching made me ugly, apparently, or less than perfect, which for a girl was a moral stain. But I wasn't paying much attention to threats or perfection. I was a dreamy, distracted child with other things on my mind, far more interesting than my posture. This private realm of my imagination also offered an escape from beatings, so I went there often. When I failed to be mindful of my posture, my parents followed through on the threat. My mother and father presented this back brace to me as a punishment for my willful disobedience. This sounds crazy, I know. Why would anyone do that to their kid just to win a power game? But that was thrust of their argument at the time. My mother was in charge of bringing me to the DuPont Orthopedic Clinic in Delaware. During the course of fitting me for the brace, one of the doctors took photographs of...