Speaking of Iestyn Flye (see the entry below this one for the scarification seminar he’s hosting with Ron Garza), I also wanted to share this amazing set of very British deep chest piercings he did. You may be wondering to yourself how such a thing could heal, since of course if you shrunk the whole thing down to 14ga, this would be about the least advisable way to do a surface piercing. However, once you start talking about this bulk of tissue, the body responds quite differently and rather than trying to spit the material out like a sliver, accepts it as “too large to fight” and sullenly heals around it — albeit in a process that can take a year or more to fully mend (with a certain amount of kicking and screaming by the tissue!).
I have been reading some of the comments on things I’ve posted with great interest. I appreciate the many warm welcomes, but it is interesting to note there are some very conservative voices commenting with knee-jerk reactions to fringe body modification pictures without reading or understanding the associated text. I wonder if that will happen with these as it did with the subclavicles? Please, readers — try and give what I post the benefit of the doubt. If I post something I feel is unsafe, I assure you, I will say so. Yes, I have a high tolerance for the unusual, but I am also not a naive fool that doesn’t have enough experience to know what the body can heal safely and what it can’t. Over twenty years ago, in the 1980s, when I was a kid in highschool, I told my then-girlfriend that I would never get a tongue piercing, and that to do such a thing was an insane risk. That seemed a reasonable thing for me to say at the time, but it sure sounds silly now, doesn’t it? If I’ve learned anything since then, it’s that the body is a remarkably pliable vessel for our sentience, and that it will tolerate being manipulated and sculpted in far more diverse ways than common sense would suggest. Now, there’s nothing wrong with caution — it keeps us alive — but there is something wrong with continuing to have that fear when time and experience show something to be possible. And of course we must remember that aesthetics differ not just between cultures, but between individuals, and one may enjoy pale plainskin, another symmetric perfection, and another a face that looks like it was caught in an explosion at a body jewelry factory. To me, that’s always been a wonderful thing about BME — that it embraces all those flavors.
BME/News and Modblog highlight only a small fraction of what
Well said Shannon, thank you! I also find it somewhat surprising how negative some people can be to others when they live in the same area of the body mod world. Just because there are some things we wouldn’t get for ourselves doesn’t mean that it’s an open door to harsh on someone elses good flow. Its funny how some people feel like they have fought all of their lives against discrimination only to do it to others when they don’t understand, or connect with what others do. Life is too short! Lets celebrate each other, not hate!
“And of course we must remember that aesthetics differ not just between cultures, but between individuals, and one may enjoy pale plainskin, another symmetric perfection, and another a face that looks like it was caught in an explosion at a body jewelry factory. To me, that’s always been a wonderful thing about BME — that it embraces all those flavors.”
I agree 100%. I don’t think I’ll ever want some of the more extreme or provocative modifications that get posted here. But I’m here because those people intrigue me — and I don’t mean that in a “I like to gawk at the freaks” kind of way. I mean that I like seeing what some people choose to do with their bodies because it is very personal and interesting and makes me think, as well as impresses me because how much strength does it take to choose to be yourself to that degree? I think everyone gets to decide what they like or want, but it’s silly to judge others for what they value and choose to do with themselves.
I’ll bite: What makes these deep chest piercings “very British”?
Patrick Bartholomew doing a bunch of them in the early days of the British piercing scene would be my guess… I just have seen a lot of them coming out of Britain. Lots of subclavicles too. Not sure what the deeper social reason is. It may be as simple as a snowballing — the right person does an odd procedure, and a bunch of people copy it when they realize it’s possible.
Is sad that your advice is not going to reach those people that doesn’t like to read the text… Just because they won’t read it. But there are a lot more that keeps enjoying your posts, like me.
I’ve always asked myself why is there people that come to Modblog, see some “extreme stuff” and start attacking or judging or insulting the artist behind it? Then why they came here to begin with, because this is the place to see that “extreme stuff”…it’s a blog about body modification, isn’t it?
And as you said, if something is unsafe you will state it on the text so that everyone knows…
Where you can get juwelary for a deep chest piercing?