Milanese businesswomen Lorella Zanardo made a short documentary critiquing the sexist depictions of women on Italian television. That documentary - Il corpo delle donne (Women's Bodies) - is available to watch online (with subtitles) here.
posted by stinkycheese on Dec 15, 2009 - 27 comments

Illustrated BMI Categories, a Flickr project where you can see what "underweight," "normal," "overweight," "obese," and "morbidly obese," BMI categories look like on real people (safe for work) (mostly women). I think that many people would be surprised by what 180lbs looks like. In addition to not looking what you might have expected fat to look like, it may also not mean what you thought it meant: [more inside]
posted by Salamandrous on Oct 3, 2007 - 182 comments

Corpses for any occasion. This one says something very important, but I'm not sure what.
posted by erebora on Jun 24, 2006 - 17 comments

Check out the giant cancer fighting colon... of science! "It's part of a national tour to educate people about various types of common and preventable cancers. The 'Check Your Insides Out -- Top to Bottom' tour is full of interactive educational exhibits on colon, lung, oral, breast, prostate and skin cancers."
posted by ilsa on Jun 24, 2004 - 4 comments

Naked body letters. Um... letters made out of naked bodies. Obviously not safe for work, but really more artsy and "nude" than even erotic. K, T and C are particularly nice, for example.
posted by Shane on Jun 10, 2004 - 7 comments

Scientists know that being fat reduces your lifespan, making you more susceptible to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and a host of other bad things. However they are only beginning to understand why. "Fat tissue is now recognized to be the body's biggest endocrine organ," producing 25 known signaling compounds and a variety of proteins.
posted by ilsa on May 12, 2004 - 37 comments

The Harvard Brain Atlas has a veritable plethora of images of the brain, whether normal or diseased. Tours, 3-D Java exploration and a [very difficult] quiz are available. Plus: the top 100 brain structures!
posted by goethean on Aug 19, 2003 - 3 comments

" I discovered that by severing a nerve behind the knee, the muscle would atrophy." Plastic surgery is booming in Asia, including some very painful procedures (such as the aforementioned trick to achieve "Western-style" legs.)
posted by Oriole Adams on Aug 13, 2003 - 25 comments

Preservation by Plastination : Until recently the privilege to view corpses and the human body’s interior has been confined to medicine students and anatomists in dissection rooms. It is only due to the invention of plastination that the general public is now also able to enjoy fascinating insights into the human body.
posted by starscream on Aug 4, 2003 - 11 comments

How About Raising Money for Him Instead of The Star Wars Kid? Perhaps the most faithful of Delhi's unpaid city servants turns 80 on Tuesday, but has no plans to retire. Mohammed Habib has had the grisly task of collecting the city's unclaimed corpses since he was 12. He says he has disposed of hundreds of bodies - and all for free - in a country where millions live in poverty.
posted by turbanhead on Jul 29, 2003 - 8 comments

The Century Project (not suitable for work) 'is a series of nude photographs accompanied by highly personal and moving statements by women whose lives span 100 years. The words and pictures combine to form a powerful statement about body image, society's portrayal of women in the media, sexuality, pornography, and women's health issues. For some, this is pretty controversial stuff...yet the simple fact that women have invited me (a man) to exhibit and speak in Churches (3 times!) and on the campuses of Colleges and Universities, by itself speaks volumes about the way in which Century has been received, and what it's value has been ... '
'Life is at its fullest at 94.' - Mary.
posted by plep on Apr 6, 2003 - 23 comments

"Researchers" study 50 years of Playboy magazine and determine that the characteristic differences between men and women are becoming less pronounced.
posted by swift on Dec 20, 2002 - 24 comments

Controversial corpse exhibit, Körperwelten (Body Worlds), is set to display human corpses in London, UK in two days. UK health department concluded that the exhibit did not breach the 1984 Anatomy Act as the law did not cover the preservation of corpses by means of plastination, a technique invented by Professor Gunther von Hagens, the creator of the exhibit.
posted by frenetic on Mar 21, 2002 - 9 comments

Great, yet unsettling, CGI reconstruction of a Neaderthal child's head. (via robotwisdom)
posted by skallas on Aug 2, 2001 - 18 comments

Everybody needs some bodies sometimes. I know these have legitimate medical purposes, but don't you know someone who would love having this guy around the house, with his Multi-Sounds? And think of the fun to be had with Mr. Hurt Head or his friend Patient Peevy. Also fun at parties and not too expensive: A pound of fat, and, uh, this (washable).
posted by argybarg on Jul 9, 2001 - 3 comments

Skinless wonders... "Art or anatomy? An exhibition of flayed corpses in Berlin has been greeted with popular acclaim and moral indignation." They plastinate ("a vacuum process in which biological specimens are impregnated with a reactive polymer") and pose the bodies, which they get from various places, including a Siberian madhouse. The show is coming to Britain.
posted by pracowity on May 20, 2001 - 11 comments

Think your life sucks? This moron has spent his entire adult life growing his fingernails. It has cost him dearly. The hand is question is a misshapen claw. He has permanent nerve damage from the weight, resulting in permanent deafness in his right ear. But at least he's famous. (via joerogan.net)
posted by Optamystic on Dec 27, 2000 - 12 comments

Seven of every ten women appearing as centrefold models in Playboy magazine during the past 20 years are clinically underweight "Given the perception of Playboy centrefolds as culturally ideal women, the notion that 70% of them are underweight highlights the social pressure on women to be thin and helps to explain the high levels of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating," "It's not just a case of models getting skinnier, but also that the numbers of overweight and obese people have gone through the roof in recent years."
posted by lagado on Dec 11, 2000 - 21 comments

Proof that you can find *anything* for sale on the web. If you ever need human bones, and your local human bone dealer is too far away, or closes early, use the internet to buy your bones!
posted by mathowie on Oct 21, 1999 - 0 comments