I really enjoyed doing the interview with Alan Macias, and was perusing BME to find other people who might make for a good interview. That’s when ran across this new picture of NoMan Pan. You may recognize him as he is no stranger to modblog. With the picture was the following description:
The first stage in my transformation process into a Western Diamondback Rattler.
The facial tattooing was done by Christine Starnes of Custom Tattoos From the Soul in Austin, Texas, which is apparently the place to be for
So NoMan Pan, I left a comment on the wall of your facebook fan page, but I couldn’t find a single other way to contact you so if you happen to come across this post and want to do an interview with me, please shoot me an email [email protected],com.
Taking a look at how relaxed ThunderKat79 looks in this photo, its hard to believe that she just had her inner eye microdermal put in. Looking at the second photo and seeing how she positioned the piercing to become part of her OM symbol, makes me believe that she was probably meditating the entire time it was being done. With meditation, one can reach a type of clarity of the mind, opening up their inner eye to take in all the world around them. To a lot of people piercings can help them achieve this state, as we see with many play piercing sessions. The ties between spirituality and modifications run deep in many cultures around the world, and the two have been linked together since the earliest recorded histories. So in today’s modern world, it isn’t surprising at all to see the practices linked in this way, as it reaffirms just how much a role modification plays in the lives of the people in the modified community.
No matter what her reasons for getting the piercing is, we can all agree that she looks very happy with the results, and that’s really what matters most.
It’s always great to see attractive modified girls on ModBlog. What’s even better is seeing them while they’re raising money to support charity.
The following photos of IAM: Pink_Fairy and IAM: Nexizydrate were taken as part of a photoshoot to raise money for cancer research in the UK. The photos were taken by MC Smith and Peter Whitney, following a play piercing session with Dan Hayes.
Keep reading to see a couple more photos from the shoot.
In case you didn’t know, Nexizydrate is the one with pink hair, and Pink_Fairy has the pink flower in her hair.
Now here’s something you don’t see every day, it’s a vertical piercing from inside the upper lip to the inside of the nostril. It’s like a reverse vertical lowbret…..no that would be a “Nick piercing“, but what would we call this? I do feel like I have seen this piercing done at least once before, but I couldn’t seem to find it on BME.
As a piercer I can’t say I am a big fan of this type of piercing and I certainly can’t recommend people getting or doing these. However, as a blogger I can’t help but appreciate the rarity of this sort of piercing, which is why I feel obliged to share it here.
The headline of this post is the exact same message that is featured in a number of ads put forth by breathe.sg. I’d like you to first watch both videos, as they’re the focus of the rest of the post.
Keep on reading to find out where these ads came from and why they were made. I’ve broken the post up because it is a long one, and I know how much you guys hate massive stories on the front page.
The last time I posted an ad that featured a heavily modified person there was a healthy debate over the implications from the ad. This time though, the implications are pretty clear. These two people, who have great stories to tell about their modifications and the meanings behind them, should be looked at negatively as they’re on the same level as a binge drinker.
It took a little digging, but I discovered that the breathe.sg campaign began in 2008 as an initiative put forth by the Singapore government’s Heath Promotion Board (HPB). In a press release dated Oct 9th, 2008, the HPB announced the creation of the Breathe campaign.
NHLC 2008: “Breathe”
2 The theme for this year’s campaign is “Breathe”. It seeks to encourage youth to choose (breathe in) life, truth and self-expression and not succumb to (breathe out) insecurity, pessimism, pressure and judgement. “Breathe” will also brand health as exciting, vibrant and an asset youth should treasure to help them achieve their fullest potential and ambitions in life.
3 “Breathe” is targeted at youth aged 12 to 23 and will be launched by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the Padang on 7 November 2008.
“Breathe – Game for Life” – Launch Event
4 The campaign’s launch event, “Breathe – Game for Life”, aims to showcase non-conventional, youth-centric activities to encourage the young to cultivate healthy habits for lifelong health. These include Human Bowling, Human Table Soccer and remote control speed racing. Conventional games such as Captain’s Ball will also be given a new twist to demonstrate how these activities can be made more exciting to engage our young in an active lifestyle.
5 Strong elements of music – a universal language among youth – will feature prominently at the launch event. In line with this, the event will feature an exhilarating new dance fitness routine, a hip-hop competition with a healthy lifestyle theme and a dance party under the stars. All these will encourage youth to keep active while grooving to their lively beats.
Launch of “Breathe” Portal
6 A new “Breathe” portal (www.breathe.sg) will be launched to engage youth on various health issues and provide them with information on events and activities held in conjunction with NHLC 2008.
In December of that year, todayonline.com wrote an article describing the efforts of the campaign, as well as it’s initial goals. The article has since been removed, but there there is a cached version of it available on a blog located here.
HE GOT drunk at a friend’s house and ended up taking off all his clothes in the bathroom. “The next thing I knew,” said :student Mervyn Lee, 19, “I woke up in my friend’s bed wearing a fresh pair of shorts.” Tales like this may raise a titter, but the dangers of excessive drinking are all too real. That is why the Health Promotion Board (HPB) will embark on its first nationwide campaign against binge drinkingnext year, aimed at 18- to 25-year-olds. Binge drinking — consuming five drinks or more for males, or four drinks or more for females, within two hours — is an “emerging issue in Singapore”, said HPB in a tender document posted on the GeBIZ website.
The HPB intends to create awareness through student-led projects and educational material targeted at tertiary students, among other things.
– Alicia Wong and Sufian Suderman, todayonline.com
Finally, as part of the 2008/2009 annual report, the chairman of the HPB, Lucas Chow, goes on to describe just how positive the campaign is meant to be. The entire report can be found here but it is a large .pdf file, so just be aware of that if you want to give it a read.
The annual National Healthy Lifestyle Campaign (NHLC) took on a youth focus for the first time, with the theme, “Breathe”. It encouraged young people to appreciate health as an asset for them to achieve their fullest potential and ambitions in life through an array of activities and events.
Now with the mandate of the campaign being intended to bring a positive outlook on their health and lifestyle, I find it interesting that their initial ad campaigns were so negative. To be fair, in addition to the ads, the Breathe campaign does sponsor a number of youth oriented events such as a hip-hop dance competition, as well as other youth themed events. But the question still remains, if the purpose of the campaign is “ to choose (breathe in) life, truth and self-expression and not succumb to not succumb to (breathe out) insecurity, pessimism, pressure and judgement”, aren’t these ads completely disingenuous? When I see the people in the videos I see two people who have chosen truth and self-expression, and aren’t showing any form of insecurity at all. The ads themselves even run counter to the notion of preventing pessimism, pressure, and especially judgement. If anything these commercials are huge examples of judgments being passed on young people in order to put them down and discourage them.
While the 2009 programs seem to be targeted towards reducing the number of teen smokers, the binge drinking campaign is still being promoted on the site’s YouTube channel.
Looking back at the ads, the question arises if the individuals in the ads knew exactly what the campaign was about. I find it hard to believe that two people with such high self-esteem would allow themselves to be used as a metaphor for an unhealthy activity. What I also find interesting is that the 2009 campaign against smoking had a fashion show event where you can obtain temporary tattoos that you’re encouraged to show off, as well as receive discounts at stores for wearing the tattoo. So while in 2008 having a lot of tattoos is equivelant to binge drinking, in 2009 suddenly it’s cool to show off a tattoo, even if it is temporary.
If the comments for the videos on YouTube are any indication, I’m not the only one who finds these ads offensive in they way they portray heavily modified people. It’s a shame that they took this approach because they may not receive the results they intended.
So ModBlog readers, what are your thoughts on this campaign? Is there a big enough cultural difference between how we see these ads, and the target audience would, that our perception of it is skewed? Or did the HPB completely miss the mark, and put out a campaign that will infuriate more people than it could help?
I’ve intentionally been avoiding writing a story about the Millennium Trilogy for a while now. While I haven’t read the books, I have seen the films which are believably good, but despite the title, the tattoo in question doesn’t really play a major role in the films. Sure the character of Lisbeth sports a massive back piece, but seeing as how you only see it a couple of times and the actress, Noomi Rapace, didn’t actually get it tattooed on herself I just assumed that the entire thing was a non-story.
Today I was pleasantly proven wrong.
Before we begin, here’s the trailer for the first film: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”
I use Google news alerts to flag stories that have specific key words in them. Tattoo of course being one of them. So you can imagine that with these films gaining international acclaim, the books being bestsellers, and casting rumors flying around for the American adaptations, my inbox has been filled for the past few months of stories about the trilogy. For the most part I just dismiss them, but since they finally got around to casting the role of Lisbeth in the American films, the e-mails have died down.
Yet here I am today, talking about the thing I promised not to discuss on ModBlog. The reason I’m bringing it up now? Well, I’ll let this article from The Mirror fill you in.
Winning a career-making role in the Dragon Tattoo films brought a strange mixture of pleasure and pain to rising star Noomi Rapace. The 30-year-old actress knew she had to nail the part of androgynous anti-hero Lisbeth Salander – or risk offending the many fans of the creator, best-selling author Stieg Larsson. So to really convince as the punky, chain-smoking, kick-ass computer hacker, Noomi embarked on a remarkable transformation. She went on a strict diet, trained in kickboxing and Thai boxing and even took her motorcycle licence. A non-smoker, she began puffing her way through “thousands of cigarettes” both on-set and off it. And she wouldn’t even consider faking all those piercings in Salander’s ears and nose because, as Noomi puts it, “I wanted to feel those piercings in myself.”
You’ll often hear of actors undergoing massive physical changes for a role. De Niro gained a significant amount of weight for his role in Raging Bull, while Christian Bale lost a frightening amount of weight in a short period of time for his role in The Machinist, only to gain it all back plus more in a couple months to be ready for his role in Batman Begins. Actors are required to change themselves to some degree for a role, sometimes it’s simply a costume, and others require a lot more commitment. So for Noomi Rapace, in order to fully transform into the character of Lisbeth she drastically changed not only her physical appearance, but also her behaviour months before filming.
While the diet and smoking is one aspect of the transformation, this being ModBlog I wanted to focus on her mods. You get a brief glimpse of them in the trailer but having seen the films it is obvious that she didn’t just opt for one or two piercings to personify the character. I counted about 10-12 seperate piercings spread out over her lobes, cartilage, nostrils and septum. While by ModBlog standards this isn’t anything too significant, to see an actress portray a character so well, and commit to that many mods is something significant. While the character of Lisbeth is certainly troubled, and goes through several drastic events over the course of the series, what we’re seeing is essentially a mainstream film that doesn’t treat modifications as some form of joke or used as shock value.
I’m sure we’ve all seen films where a “punk” character appears on screen wielding a vast array of facial piercings simply to appear intimidating to the viewer, yet in these films the piercings appear to be just a natural extension of the character. In fact, in the scenes where she isn’t wearing her piercings you get a sense of discomfort looking at her, as if something is missing. Which of course there is. I think an accurate analogy to this would be the NYC skyline post 9-11. The image of the skyline had been etched into the minds of millions of people, and now, looking at it, there is something missing. I’m not making any political statements or anything like that, but the idea that something is removed from an image that everyone was used to seeing makes one feel that sense of “not right”. Of course the NYC skyline itself evokes a lot of feelings, but I think you get where I was going with this. I really think that with Noomi Racpace’s commitment to the role, combined with a skilled filmmaker, that this may be the first portrayal of a modified person that actually captures the essence of the modified culture. Where the focus is on the character, and not the mods, yet when the mods are removed you can tell something has changed not only on her physical exterior, but something inside her as well.
If you were to take a look in a mirror one day and all of your mods were gone, how would you feel? What about those close to you, how do you think they would react if a modification you’ve had for years was suddenly gone without a trace? Because we don’t treat our modifications as something other than what they are, an extension of our ideal selves, we can sense the incompleteness that occurs with a mod is removed. Yes I realize people retire mods all the time, but even then, those first few days really can reveal how much our mods are a part of us.
Looking back at these films with the knowledge of the actor’s commitment to the part, it really shines a light on how a person who is modified isn’t defined by their mods, but by who they are as a person. While this isn’t anything new to us, there still is a large portion of the population that doesn’t realize it. Given that the titular dragon tattoo is the one modification in the film that isn’t a real mod, I thought I should close this post out with a real dragon tattoo from the BMEzine.com tattoo galleries.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has seen the films. Can anyone else who has seen them weigh in? Did Noomi Rapace actually getting the piercings done change your view of the films and her portrayal, or does her performance stand out on its own without the piercings being a factor?
Any longtime modblog reader will probably remember xronix in one of his multiple previous features. He has been featured numerous times on here and for good reason, he has an amazing collection of mods and changes looks enough that each feature appears totally different from the last. I really dig this picture, it’s almost like he has evolved past human and if I were ever to make a sequel to “The Fifth Element“, I would damn sure cast him in a major role.
It is also well worth noting that xronix, not only has his eyeballs tattooed, but he did them himself!
This picture and accompanying note came to use from Stacey, let it be a heart congrats to all graduates from us humble modblog authors.
Tis the season of college graduations, this pic represents my own personal accomplishment of receiving my Bachelors degree in Music Business/Management, but I’d like to send out a big congrats to my fellow graduates for whatever field they have completed, whether you’re a marine biologist, just finished your piercing apprenticeship, or any other of the millions of fields one can go into. I thought it would be nice for BME to recognize personal accomplishments of those who face discrimination for their mods yet pursue their dreams. Congrats all!!!!
….I sure find these high monroe piercings interesting. They are so high, they almost border on a “nick” piercing, except they are still (comparatively to the Nick piercings at least) horizontal piercings.
I am curious as to what effect these piercings would have on the gums as I can’t imagine there is anyway the backs are perpendicular to the pierced tissue, but without a picture of the inside of his mouth I am left to guess.
These were done by Sarita who works at Chrome In London.
Today’s March Mustache Madness entry comes to us from a dapper young gentleman who goes by sxe rob.
Asides from his macho mustache he also has a chest rocker by Cindy Solano at NoKaOi in Philadelphia, 1 3/8″ ears, 12 ga paired lip percings, 12 ga monroe, and 14 ga double nostrils.
My mustache has come and gone but it always makes me happy.
