Woven Memories: Arts-based Autoethnography of Scar Stigma and Body Modification

Abstract

Women’s scars in visual culture are not merely marks on the body, but sites where gendered and ableist cultural norms converge to demand flawless skin, concealment, and correction. Drawing on feminist body politics and crip theory, this arts-based autoethnography reframes my traumatic experience of scar revision surgery as a consequence of South Korean society’s disciplining of women’s bodies into docility, under the false promise of cure and recovery embedded in ableist ideology. Layered with autobiographical narratives and images of scars, my artwork, Woven Memories, challenges the continued marginalization of women’s body modification experiences and enacts feminist resistance through the critical retelling of scar stigma narratives. This study highlights the potential of arts-based autoethnography to revalue the memories of women with scars and to foster self-reflective feminist art practices that open up broader conversations about gendered body normativity and disability justice in a transnational context.