Chelsea Charms claims that she has the biggest artificial breasts in the world. She is followed by more than 270,000 users on Twitter. Charms gives interviews to the mainstream media. She also runs her own website. Although she has never used her body in hardcore pornography, she is nevertheless a kind of celebrity, very careful about her image, defined, obviously, by her enormous bust. Charms very clearly identifies herself with her breasts. In the media her breasts are presented as the essence of her personality. In a cultural sense, there is no difference between her image and her bust, allowing us to speak of a peculiar branding, with Charms’s breasts serving as a “logo”. In this article I analyse how the media figure of “the woman with the largest (augmented) breasts in the world” comes to life, in relation to Celia Lury and Scott Lash’s theory of the global culture industry and Hartmut Boehme’s take on the cultural role of fetishism in modernity. I attempt to deconstruct the “Chelsea Charms” brand in the context of contemporary image culture, which feeds on augmented bodies like no other. At the same time, I pose a crucial question: Does having an artificial body automatically lead to having an artificial identity or is the relation between the two much more complex, and by reconstructing it, can one can better understand contemporary strategies of identity building, even outside of this particular case? The answer is paradoxical: because of her curious character, Chelsea Charms can be seen as a model exponent of the culture of virtuality, which is based on the myths of individual agency, creative freedom, and plasticity of human existence, including the body. 

Chelsea Charms twierdzi, że jest posiadaczką największego na świecie sztucznego biustu, który czyni ją swoistą gwiazdą medialną, pieczołowicie dbającą o wizerunek, którego wyznacznikiem są właśnie ogromnych rozmiarów piersi. W kulturowym sensie między jej wizerunkiem a jej piersiami można postawić znak równości, co pozwala mówić o procesie budowania swoistej marki, której „logo”  staje się prezentowany na różne sposoby biust. W niniejszym tekście przyglądam się sposobom, w jaki tworzy się medialna figura „kobiety o największym (powiększonym) biuście na świecie”, w świetle teorii globalnego przemysłu kulturowego Celii Lury i Scotta Lasha oraz kulturowej roli fetyszyzmu w dobie nowoczesności według Hartmuta Böhmego. Podejmuję próbę zdekonstruowania marki „Chelsea Charms” w kontekście współczesnej kultury wizerunku, która żywi się transformacją ciała jak żadna inna. Stawiam też kluczowe pytanie: czy sztuczne ciało przekłada się automatycznie na sztuczną tożsamość, czy też relacja między nimi jest znacznie bardziej skomplikowana, a jej rekonstrukcja może przyczynić się do zrozumienia współczesnych strategii tożsamościowych nie tylko w analizowanym przypadku? Odpowiedź jest paradoksalna: właśnie poprzez kuriozalność swojego ciała, staje się Chelsea Charms modelową przedstawicielką kultury wirtualności, której fundacyjnymi mitami są jednostkowa sprawczość, kreatywna wolność i plastyczny charakter egzystencji, w tym ciała.

Chelsea Charms: The curious body as a brand

Abstract

Chelsea Charms claims that she has the biggest artificial breasts in the world. She is followed by more than 270,000 users on Twitter. Charms gives interviews to the mainstream media. She also runs her own website. Although she has never used her body in hardcore pornography, she is nevertheless a kind of celebrity, very careful about her image, defined, obviously, by her enormous bust. Charms very clearly identifies herself with her breasts. In the media her breasts are presented as the essence of her personality. In a cultural sense, there is no difference between her image and her bust, allowing us to speak of a peculiar branding, with Charms’s breasts serving as a “logo”. In this article I analyse how the media figure of “the woman with the largest (augmented) breasts in the world” comes to life, in relation to Celia Lury and Scott Lash’s theory of the global culture industry and Hartmut Boehme’s take on the cultural role of fetishism in modernity. I attempt to deconstruct the “Chelsea Charms” brand in the context of contemporary image culture, which feeds on augmented bodies like no other. At the same time, I pose a crucial question: Does having an artificial body automatically lead to having an artificial identity or is the relation between the two much more complex, and by reconstructing it, can one can better understand contemporary strategies of identity building, even outside of this particular case? The answer is paradoxical: because of her curious character, Chelsea Charms can be seen as a model exponent of the culture of virtuality, which is based on the myths of individual agency, creative freedom, and plasticity of human existence, including the body.