"The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain." �- Karl Marx
At A Glance Author espviper Contact [email protected] IAM espviper When N/A I would like to say that I hate the pain involved in getting tattooed or pierced. I would like to believe that getting rid of the pain would make all my future experiences getting modified better. But what if getting a tattoo meant relaxing for a few, lazy hours while feeling only a light tickling sensation on your skin? What if there was absolutely no sensation to feel at all? I wonder about this, because pain so heavily factors into the stigma that plagues body modification. The first question any unmodified person asks someone with a visible tattoo or piercing is, "Did it hurt?" And the honest answer, the vast majority of the time, is "Yes, of course it did." Their next question is often, "Then why did you do it?"
The feeling of pain can be so sudden, so extreme, and so moving that the vast majority of people have no idea how to react to it. Its practical nature is that of a design meant to warn us that we are damaging our bodies � and therefore is extremely crucial to ensuring our species' long-term survival. We cannot help but dislike the extreme discomfort it causes, which of course is the point. If a person enjoys all pain, they lose the incentive to avoid damaging their body. So then, why do we push on the fresh cut on our hand, just to feel that dull throb? Why, once we discover that rotating our elbow or knee a certain way hurts, or pushing our tongue against a fresh chancre sore hurts, do we continue to do it?
By accepting, embracing, or paying for pain, those of us who modify our bodies are directly violating a long-held social norm. Pain is feared and shunned for being an unpleasant and startling biological sensation. The idea that someone would pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to spend many hours of their time having great pain inflicted upon them deepens the "rift" (and I place that word in quotations, because such a rift is quite non-existent) dividing the psyche's of the modified and unmodified. Basically the situation is summed up in a simple way by the average unmodified citizen: Not only are the modified crazy enough to pay to have their body's changed in very extensive and permanent ways, but they also endure great pain to do it.
Who are the people that can seemingly endure the most pain in our society? The tough? The intimidating? The aggressive? The soldiers? The big, menacing athletes? The sexual deviants? The freaks in the freak shows? The criminals? People with a certain image to uphold, or a certain violent cause to pursue are the ones renown for utilizing pain. By accepting pain, we are including ourselves among these groups � at least in society's squinting eyes. Can anyone say, in full honesty, that if pain was NOT a factor in the processes we use to beautify ourselves, that these processes would still represent such rebellious and devious acts?
There are a few interesting cases of what could be considered "extreme" body modifications being possible without feeling ANY pain. Stretched earlobes, done properly, are one such example. People typically ask, when encountering a lobe piercing that has been greatly stretched out, "Didn't that hurt?" When they are informed that it didn't they usually aren't sure what to think. Their minds having been so focused on the excitement and mystery shrouding the pain they were so sure accompanied the stretching, that they are caught off-guard. What astounds me to an even greater extent, is when somebody who has no tattoos on their body, asks me, "Didn't that hurt?" This proves that society has thoroughly trained its members to focus on the painful aspect of the modification, and little else. This is because it is so easy to represent that aspect as being undesirable and therefore negative. Wouldn't a much more natural question about the tattoo be, "What did it feel like?" W hy would they be so concerned with pain, when they had never even been tattooed themselves?
Well let me get to the point here. Am I asking that body modification practitioners, work to find better methods to minimize the pain involved in body modification procedures? No, quite the opposite actually. By denying the pain's right to exist and fighting against it, we deny its legitimacy and its importance...we deny the being of a feeling natural to the bodies we so cherish. In all reality, experiencing pain in the course of getting a tattoo, a piercing, or a subincision, will ALWAYS be a part of the experience. To make out as though the pain is the one unfortunate part of body modification is to ignore the fact that it very well may be worthwhile � and that it is not something that only the disturbed individuals of our society would enjoy.
Pain can act as a rite of passage, as a way to deeply probe the strength and meanings of your own emotions, and as an incredible contrast to the complacent, dull feeling that shrouds many of our every day lives. As the quote preceding this article's body suggests, physical pain can be a cure...not just a symptom or an ailment to be feared and despised. I would rather feel pain than feel no sensation at all.
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