When being A wakes up in the morning, it first has to orient itself: where is it currently, who owns the room, the bed – and who owns the body in which A is now located? Because A begins every new day in a different physical environment. Everything is different, just not his consciousness and his biological age, which is just 16 years. Sometimes A is male, sometimes female, black or white, sometimes A lives in a rich family, sometimes in precarious circumstances, in a loving family or among people who no longer care about A. And it’s always about the quick adjustment to the life into which A is thrown for a single day. This is what it says in David Levithan’s youth book “Ultimately we don’t care about the universe” by David Levithan, published in the American original in 2012 and two years later by S. Fischer. It is not only extremely exciting, because A’s constant visits to complete strangers leave traces in the lives concerned, which are spent at least for one day in a completely different way than usual, which in the environment – parents, friends, loved ones – for astonishment and even suspicion cares.
It also raises fundamental questions: If the visit of A in the body of the adolescent, despite all efforts not to attract attention, can bring about such changes, why else do the adolescents remain so caught up in their routine, in their good and bad habits? And vice versa: If A – detached from any solid body of its own – can adapt to so many such different others, what role does biology still play for a person’s identity? Does A feel that he belongs to a gender or an ethnic group, or does the being, conversely, shape the respective body? The only thing that is certain is that A is extremely lonely because no quick friendship can last even this one day – the next day A will look completely different and be perhaps 2000 kilometers away. And could one really, asks the author Levithan, “love someone who is so physically shapeless, but at the same time so constant in his innermost being?”
Feel good in your own body
Bodies have long been a topic in children’s books, mostly by describing their respective appearance and functions, i.e. from a predominantly biological perspective. While for a long time the focus was on what all bodies have in common, in the past decades the focus has sharpened on differences, i.e. what makes a body unique. “Your own body is the home of every person”, says the current book “AnyBody” by Katharina von der Gathen and Anke Kuhl (Klett children’s book): “Nobody can first choose their parents or the country into which they were born will. In the same way, nobody can choose beforehand which physical characteristics he or she will be born with. But you can find out how you feel most comfortable with your own body. “
Trapped in the ideas of our society: Children grow up in a binary system and don’t know where if they don’t fit in there.
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Image: Philip Schönfeld
That is the main topic of the alphabetically structured book: From “To be old” and “Disabled” to entries such as “Gender” and “Ugly”, “Plastic surgery” and “Determine yourself” to “Vulva”, “Too fat”, “Too thin” and “at home” are as much about biological reality as we are about how we look at it. As in earlier books by the author and the illustrator, the texts react to conversations and questions from those who are supposed to read “AnyBody” – that is, the children. And entries such as “cosmetic surgery” avoid obvious impulses. It starts with the sentence “Some people are so unhappy with individual parts of their bodies that they decide to have an operation”, so it initially signals understanding in a field that parents would rather not enter and which their children would rather be in front of want to preserve. After a number of reasons have been listed that are there for such unhappiness, it is right to say: “An operation should be carefully considered. It almost always includes pain, bleeding and permanent scars. Working with a doctor is a good way to find out whether an operation really helps you to feel better about your body. “
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