Afterword

Hypertext artist Shelley Jackson’s girlhood “nails were chewed ragged and rimmed with dirt.” ¹ She would color them “black with pencil” or make “fake fingernails” out of “fruit leather” and stick them on “with spit.” Her friends were disgusted but she “thought they looked glamorous.” Through this and related personal and conceptual narratives, Jackson highlights the ways the body is produced and social norms are conveyed. She shows how the female body functions as part of a regulatory system that mandates work from women and enables women to understand themselves in varied ways. Jackson produces these divergent readings of the body and fingernails as part of the “my body” – a Wunderkammer hypertext. She emphasizes the self as a technology, which is mediated by varied Internet and social conventions, and a cabinet of curiosities—a precursor to the museum where fascinating things are more important than authenticity and categorical relationships. While Jackson renders her hands, fingernails, toenails, and many other sectioned parts of her body and the interface in detail, she leaves her face as a simple line drawing. ² In the introductory image, she only depicts part of the head, which is presumably a bust of her, and uses the top of the screen to crop out her eyes. ³ This is different than the selfie and other Internet representations that tend to center the face and emphasize the eyes.