The body, honest

Tonight's writers are honest about what it means to live in a body -- not as metaphor, not as philosophy, but as daily fact. Whitman catalogues the body part by part with a frankness that scandalized his century. Mairs refuses every comfortable word for her condition and tells you exactly what multiple sclerosis looks like from the inside. O'Connor gives a woman a wooden leg and then takes it away from her. Watch how each writer treats the body as something that can be celebrated, endured, or stolen -- and notice who gets to decide which.