Wondering if you should visit Montreal? Here’s a reason to just say “oui”.
Vegas sends us these gorgeous photos. The beautiful greywork on her arms was done by Seve Estevez of Imago Tattoo.
See more of Seve’s work (and the lovely Vegas) in his mini portfolio on BME.
One of my favorite features on BME’s main site is the experience section. People contribute stories of their experiences with their own modifications, which are then reviewed by a panel of community members. If your story is really well written, then it may get featured. I’ve selected some recently featured experiences for your reading enjoyment.
A little taste of #2:
“I’ve come to tattooing perhaps way too early in life. In the years between my 14th and 18th birthdays I acquired between 10-12 (depending on how you look at it) tattoos with my parent’s approval. At that time I took tattoos to be a fashion statement rather then the form of personal express I now view them as many years later. Impulsive as a teen I made a few bad tattooing mistakes (Actually I just made a lot of mistakes in general). But one tattoo in particular was an experience that has affected me throughout my adult life.”
To submit your own experience and get a free account on BME, click here!
I know I am. I used to actually kind of despise football, but as I got older I have started to appreciate it. Anyhow, I am planning ahead for a super bowl post full of football related mod work, so if you have any, shoot me an email.
In the mean time, Shannon here has the spirit. She may be sporting a Ravens jersey, but I won’t hold that against her and you shouldn’t either.
PS: You think that Subincision I posted a few days ago must have hurt? You should try being a Redskins fan. That my friends is REAL PAIN.
I removed the post that Sean put up earlier which was causing such controversy. I didn’t want the discussion to keep revolving around one person’s tattoos because we don’t know if that person is a racist or just an idiot (if it’s the first then it looks like the answer would be both).
Shannon and I have been discussing the post via email earlier and he reminded me of this old post of a Hitler portrait from a tattooer in Singapore. As it stands now and has been the policy for years, racist and hategroup tattoos go into the Political Section of BME. Similar to the Animal Tattoo & Piercing sections, we don’t support it but BME’s mandate is to archive and catalog the evolution and history of our community, even the ignorant aspects of it. However, that doesn’t expand to other parts of BME like IAM.
IAM’s long standing TOS states the following:
“IAM is a community built around principles of tolerance. You may not post hatespeech (race, gender, or sexuality-based attacks). This includes use of terms like “gay” or “fag” or “kike” in a derogatory manner, even in jest. This rule is very strict, and extends to racist codes and iconography (“14″, “88″, and so on), as well as NSBM and racist band lists and so on. This includes verifiable offsite posts. To be very clear about this: if you are a bigot, onsite or off, stay off IAM. This is not a ban on racism. This is a total ban on bigots.”
This begs the question as far as political commentary on racist tattoos. I personally don’t want to see them get any more attention than they deserve, which is why they’re generally quietly filed away, along with other ill advised modifications. We can’t sit back and pretend that they don’t exist but we also don’t need to give them any room in the spot light that is Modblog.
As both Sean and I have said in the comments section, neither of us recognized the tattoo as a Totenkopf. At first glance I thought it was three skulls because you couldn’t see the entire tattoo. I was sent some messages stating that the racist aspect of the tattoo should be ignored because it wasn’t the focus of the post. The focus of the post was the small boobs and not tattoos. I don’t agree with that line of thinking. One of the other reasons we can’t flat out reject racist tattoos is that we simply don’t have the manpower to be fully adept at all the secret racist codes out there. As none of the staff on BME are racists, we don’t know the secret handshakes. So we try to file the tattoos where they belong. Maybe it would be more helpful if racists grew balls and weren’t so embarrased by their beliefs that they have to disguise them.
The reasoning for this post was to give you guys a post to comment on that wasn’t attacking a specific individual. So let your thoughts fly.
Hello! I’m San (aka BlueStar) and this is my first post to Modblog.
I found this while checking out Allen Falkner’s blog, and was completely blown away! This is a video of Neil, from the ARGO suspension team doing a single point stomach, or better know as “resurrection”, suspension. As Allen said, this is something you should definitely not try at home!
At first when I saw this photo, the tourist posing with photographs from super heroes on Hollywood Blvd popped into my head. Luckily enough for us though this is just one kick ass couple that met through BME. I love the juxtaposition of his heavily modified face and her perfectly plain skin. Gnomoweb and his bride to be are yet another couple from Brasil. 🙂
See more in “Couples who met through BME“ (Culture)
I dedicate this post to Google Adsense. The more Google tells me I can’t post images like this, the more it makes me want to post them. I hate being told what to do. I like to make my own decisions and this is one reason that I’ve never wanted to have advertising on BME. I don’t want to be forced to bow down to pressure from advertisers telling me things are “too extreme” or “too weird”. This is my community that I love and cherish. I will fight for our rights to do what we want with our bodies till the day I die and I hope you all will stand up and fight with me.
Thanks to Jared from The Loft in Columbus, OH for the photos. Click through for more, including googles version of pornography!
The world is not a just fair place. I’m an adult. I get this. I am fully versed that when deciding to heavily modify yourself, you have to take the challenges and obstacles that come with it. Take Modblog for example. It’s usually not a hard task finding photos to post, after we try and hide some watermarks in there so the sites that steal photos that are submitted to BME can actually be caught but it’s a gentle reminder or a swift kick in the pants how fucked up the world is. I see all of these sites that steal our content and then get linked from other sites and receive hundreds of thousands of hits from stumble upon or Digg. Even though you can’t link to BMEzine.com from those sites. So the BME is blocked but not the sites that steal BME’s submissions and post them on their own all the while displaying advertising, which is generally google ads.
Some of you may have noticed that I no longer have Google ads displayed in any of the galleries on BME. Here is an email that I received the other day:
Hello,
While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying
Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For
instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as
http://www.bme.com/ritual/supsus001.html. Please note that this URL is an
example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of your
website.As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to
place Google ads on pages with violent content. This includes sites with
content related to breaking bones, getting hit by trains or cars, or
people receiving serious injuries.Please make any necessary changes to your webpages in the next 72 hours.
We also suggest that you take the time to review our program policies
(https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) to ensure that all of your other
pages are in compliance.Once you update your site, we will automatically detect the changes and ad
serving will not be affected. If you choose not to make the changes to
your account within the next three days, your account will remain active
but you will no longer be able to display ads on the site. Please note,
however, that we may disable your account if further violations are found
in the future.Thank you for your cooperation.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Uhm, excuse me?? Did google just send me an email comparing the act of suspension to the same content as breaking bones, getting hit by trains or cars, or people receiving serious injuries?? Yeah, they did. When I wrote them back.. oh wait, you can’t write them back because all contact and demands are sent from no-reply email addresses so you can’t even have a rational discussion with a human being. I had a contact email address for a google ad rep so I forwarded them this message asking how they can compare something like suspension, which is a right of passage in ancient cultures and a very personal and spiritual (and I don’t mean in a God kind of way) experience for an individual. I tried to explain to them it’s not the same as some “gross out” type site that films people getting into car accidents or being hit by a train but their only reply was that they also found ads being displayed next to “pornography” which was actually the image I’m posting below.
Oh no! Seriously! If this is the type of thing that’s considered pornography, then I’m in a heap of trouble. Please remember if you see sites stealing photos from BME, please use this url to create a ticket so that we can get the images off of their sites. I’ll be following this post in a second with a ton of suspension photos as a hearty dose of F-U-Google!
I am sure modblog reader are familiar with “the myspace angle”, you know, the one where people hold the camera way up high and photograph themselves below. That angle has been proven to be able to take off well over a hundred pounds if used correctly. In a similar fashion photographers often take pictures looking up at there subject, therefore creating the illusion of the subject towering over them.
Well that is exactly what photographer Simon Jacobs did when photographing Dave Bastard for this picture. You see I knew Dave on IAM years before meeting him. From his pictures I thought he was a giant beast of a man, boy was I shocked to see he was just a few inches above oompa loompa height!
Don’t let his small stature fool you though; with his extensive tattooing, muscular physique and extensive gun collection he is one bad ass MoFu! He is also one of the best blackwork tattoo artist in North America, a continent that often overlooks top notch blackwork by stigmatizing it as “tribal”. Check out Dave and his wife Lea’s work here.
I just read on Rachel’s page about Ari getting her ears re-pierced soon. It got me thinking about children’s ear piercings. While, I, as a piercer, refuse to do babies ears. However, I fully encourage parents to wait until there child is old enough to ask for the piercing and then bring them into a proper piercing establishment. Most of the modblog readers can spout off reasons why piercing guns are bad and those are all valid points. However, people often overlook the importance of a skilled piercer doing the lobe piercings and assume merely using a needle alone is enough. This is why the vast majority of ear lobe piercings are poorly angled or not symetrically matched and also why many in our community who have stretched from “regular” lobe piercings end up needing to be scalpelled to correct this initial screw up later down the line.
Rest assured John Scarab’s niece is on the right path if she decides to follow in her uncle’s footsteps and stretch her lobes when she is older. Or maybe she will decide to keep with the smaller jewelry like the white gold studs with pink sapphires she was pierced with. Either way as long as she doesn’t decide to “Gauge” her ears, John has done well for her.
