At A Glance
Author	Blandrea
Contact	[email protected]
IAM	blandrea
When	N/A

I have been modifying my body since I was about 11 years old. I'm disregarding the run of the mill ear lobes that most girls get done at a fairly young age. The older I got the more open I became to what my modifications meant to me, and how they affected my life. The older I became the more it seemed that body modification and spiritual modification went hand and hand for me. I am by no means and unintelligent person. I don't claim to be brilliant by any stretch of the imagination, but I like to think that I have enough common sense and people skills to get me through day to day life with quite a bit of ease. I knew as soon as I began to mod my body in more permanent and visible ways it would close many doors to me. The bottom line is a piercing can always be taken out, you decide to visibly tattoo yourself or stretch piercing to a large gauge, you are in a sense screwed for life.

Now please take that with a grain of salt. I find the benefits of what I've done to far outweigh anything negative that comes along with it. Will I feel this way 20 years from now? Well I would tend to strongly think yes I will, if I didn't I would have never so much as placed a tattoo on my body. Then again only one thing in life is 100% and we all know what that is. I find that the vast majority of people take all these things into consideration before they permanently alter their appearance. However I have seen more and more lately people that really don't think once about it. Perhaps it's the area I live in, maybe the "scene" I mostly associate with. It seems to me a lot of the *very* young people I know start with their wrists and work up. Well that's just fine until I hear people bellyaching about how people look down on them, or how they suddenly can't find a job and don't know why. Well yes it's shitty people will judge you, and it sucks a qualified person will not get a job based on appearance. But you know what that's the way it is, how could you not take those things into consideration? I decided to put together a short list of ways that my mods have affected my life that stand out to me.

The Family: I have always felt extremely blessed in the fact that my parents have been very supportive in whatever I did to change my appearance. This doesn't mean that they found everything I did attractive, or weren't concerned my mods would hinder me in pursuing all my goals. They just knew that they had raised and intelligent strong minded daughter. I urge parents who have the tendency to freak out over their children getting pierced, tattooed, etc. to look at the bottom line. Whether or not your child is a truly good person is largely based on you and how you raised them. Getting a eyebrow ring is not going to make a person a piece of shit, their parents degrading them, hindering them in expressing their individuality, or pursuing what makes them happy just might. My father kind of laughed after he saw the tattoos on my wrists. He said "not very pretty". he said he has never been much on appearances and isn't into that much aesthetic pleasure when it comes to how he looks. I simply have told him it's not aesthetic for me as much as it is spiritual. I've never felt I had to elaborate because I know he accepts what I tell him as fact. He still thinks I'm beautiful and tells me all the time I should model. I'm not sure I would have never known to what extent my parents will accept what I choose to do in my life, unless I started getting body mods. As long as it's positive for me they will support it. Ok That was the positive, here is some negative.

The "Career" Ok not really a career, not what I planned to do in life by a long shot. I was working as a restaurant manager. I was getting paid very well for a person my age and had moved up my job ladder very quickly. When I had started out at the job I did have numerous piercings, all of which I had removed, with the exception of my lobes which weren't all that big at the time. The tattoos that I had were few and not very visible, and they didn't much care what I did with my hair as long as it was pinned back neatly and I looked clean. I was very understanding about not wearing my piercings, I realize when you work in a food service industry there are numerous regulations that must be followed. I wasn't happy I could not look how I chose to look in everyday life but figured that it wasn't a huge sacrifice to be able to pay my bills. Around the time of the company Christmas party this all changed. This was held at a casino close to the area that I lived in and was a bl ack tie event. I'm of the mind that I can look very classy while still wearing all my piercings. I had a very nice "normal" looking black dress on, my makeup was done nicely and I looked like what most people would deem to be completely normal. However I did wear all my piercings. Everything was seemingly fine until Monday, the district manager showed up at my store to discuss my work "ethic" with me. Up until this point I was made to believe that the only reason I was unable to look the way I wanted was due to food regulations. It was all at once cleared up. It was said flat out that my piercings were ugly and they didn't want to convey that message. Ok fine. Well all at once I lost all zest for that job, I just didn't give a shit anymore. I got my wrists tattooed and it was quite along while before they noticed. When it was brought up I was told that it was fine to show the sleeve I had because it was pretty but the wrists were not and they had to be covered. How I was to cover one and not the other was beyond me. Bear in mind 70% of the pe ople in my store were tattooed as well. This caused a huge blow out. I explained that it was not up to them too deem what was pleasing to the eye and what was not. I had no problem If they say that tattoos are against the dress code and wanted to make a new version of the dress code that all employees must abide by, and at that time I would cover them. Within a week of my standing up for myself I was "downsized". Well I can't really bitch, I think it's unfortunate I did and excellent job there and they have never had the sales growth that they saw the year and a half I was working there, but I know how this world works and I know people will always judge you based on your looks. The only difference is I control whether or not I am modified.

The Relationship: So about 3 and a half years ago I met an amazing man. He later told me that when he first laid eyes on me he first noticed how beautiful I was and then immediately noticed that I had a lot of piercings. He said he found it odd that he was attracted to a girl with so many of them. Well that was all fine and good, he thought I was beautiful and that made me happy. As time progressed into the relationship I noticed it bothered him a lot when I got new work done. When I discussed getting dermal removal done he was disgusted. I dropped the idea and went about a year without getting any work done at all. My spirit suffered greatly in this time. He never told me I couldn't get anything done, he always insisted I could do whatever I wanted but he felt that I was beautiful and he didn't want me to ruin that. I could not wrap my mind around the fact that he planned to tattoo his face for his own spiritual reasons, but could not understand mine. Our relationship u ltimately ended. It seemed to me there were just too many differences. I went on about my plans and got my dermal removal done and showed it to him, he was to say the least disgusted. We went back and forth in talking about getting back together but continuously came back to the fact that he couldn't accept what I chose to do with my body. In him I saw more effort to change his views than in anyone I have ever known. We are now back together and although he doesn't love the way everything I do looks he does still think that I am beautiful and genuinely understands how important every one of my mods is to me. Sometimes It takes an incredible amount of effort for someone to understand your motivations even if they truly love you. Try to think about that if you are getting tons of shit from your parents or someone else in your life. Chances are it wouldn't be such a big deal to them if they didn't care. And sadly sometimes they never come around.

Society: This bothers me the least of all the things I see. Probably because I have always taken humans with a grain of salt. Contrary to what I hear all the time, people do not cross the street when they see me walking towards them. Children aren't scared either, as a matter of fact little girls are constantly in awe of me always commenting on how pretty my hair is and so on. There always are people who are going to down you for how you look no matter what. I have been called a freak and I know people assume that I am a certain type of personality just by looking at me. I just assume these are the types of people I don't want to be around anyway. I look at it as a blessing in the fact that it filters out a lot of people I don't want involved in my life. I have heard often "your such a pretty girl why are you going to ruin yourself" or "Your so intelligent I had no idea from looking at you." Of course I hear "Did that hurt" about 50 times a day. I have decided that it's usually just a way for people to say oh cool you have a piercing/tattoo. The number one most annoying thing that has come out of any of my mods is the fact that a lot of people think you have lowered yourself to becoming a second class citizen. Someone they can grope and prod at anytime they please. I can't tell you how many times I have had someone grab my arm to inspect my tattoos or pull on a ring in my face. It astounds me anyone could feel they have the right to touch me. I'm the type of person who doesn't even like to shake hands. I feel that a persons space is a very important thing to be respected., I would never dream of randomly placing my hands on someone. This all boils down to people I wouldn't want to deal with anyway but they always look so surprised at the reaction they get. Hey if you put your hands on me I can put my hands on you..

I guess to sum it all up there are a lot of annoying side effects that have come along with how I've chose to live my life. I don't spend too much time thinking or bitching about them because they were all something I thought about before I decided to do anything I have done to change my appearance. I'm sure there are some people who will take offense to some of the things that I have written here, but keep in mind that this is my opinion, and my experiences. I just hope that maybe this will urge people to really think out all the possibilities of how permanent mods can change your life, and if they are something that you are ready to accept. No matter what you do you are always going to alienate certain sects of society. Deciding to pursue body modification for whatever reason is a quick and easy way to do that to an extreme extent. It's been worth it for me but really think about whether or not it would be worth it for you.