Leonard Nimoy’s The Full Body Project

Actor, photographer, director, poet, memoirist, singer and whale sound-recorder Leonard Nimoy would obviously like to be known for more than playing the ultra--logical Mr. Spock in the Star Trek franchise. Yet there is something Spock-like about his The Full Body Project, a photography book of nude women of various sizes and builds that he’s promoting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston today. “The average American woman weighs 25 percent more than the models selling their clothes,” Nimoy writes in the preface. “There is a huge industry built around selling women ways to get their bodies closer to the fantasy ideal.”

And it is the Vulcan way to dispel a “fantasy ideal.” Nimoy realizes that not every woman looks like Lieutenant Uhura or Counselor Troi or the Borg chick from Star Trek: Voyager who was married to that Republican sex pervert who ran for senator of Illinois. Some look like Dr. Crusher or Captain Janeway or Whoopi Goldberg’s bartender on The Next Generation. And that is okay. Thank you, Mr. Nimoy, for simultaneously stepping beyond Spock and reminding us of the virtues he embodies. Live long and prosper. Leonard Nimoy appears today at 2 p.m. 1001 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-639-7300 or visit www.mfah.org. Free.
Sat., Nov. 10, 2 p.m.; Sun., Nov. 11, 4 p.m., 2007