At A Glance
Author	Stef D
Contact	Stef [email protected]
IAM	cynicism_becomes
When	N/A

Susan Bishop, a wealthy twenty-something-year-old resident of Montreal's trendy Plateau district, is possessed by her newfound inclination to "become" an artist. Prior to her carefully-strategized ascent to creative stardom, she intends to assert her forthcoming success by polling and questioning, picking and prodding the majority of people at her Friday-night loft party. Darting airily through the rooms, she makes periodic stops around random people and poses the following question: What is it that makes you [personally] beautiful?

For those few of us who have the attention to listen to the gamut of answers, we find ourselves rather displeased. Realistically, there is no "gamut" of answers at all to her question - not that this amounts to a problem by Susan's standards. The question is a loaded one, and it is not asked in the spirit of seriousness that it deserves, but instead as a research poll for Susan to wield to her own advantage once her art extravaganza begins.

A few of her answers: "Confidence", "Value of yourself", "Genes, thanks", and so on. Ensuing discussions commence.

Susan does wend her way around the room, and I overhear one woman answer: "Scars."

Questions result: "What do you mean?"

What she's trying to say, she tell her, is that the emotional imprint of your past does impact upon you physically. She don't mean to say 'scars' as tangible scars per se - beauty to her is the wielding of one's past in a certain manner so as to affect you in a peculiar fashion. This, of course, is not very concise or articulate, and the scene moves on without much of a revelation.

I immediately stand and introduce myself to this person. Her name was Anna. The following is the topics we touched upon in 'our conversation', an exchange of words that took place over the course of several months of close friendship, up until her death in the March of 2003.

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A thread of the understanding of beauty as a physical and emotionally personified property amongst "modded" people is that of the parallelism between a body modification and its meaning unto oneself. I can safely state that for all of my piercings I allot a meaning or catharsis in having it, the same going for any scarring or future mods. It is through this degree of pent-up emotional release that I finally become comfortable in my own skin, reclaim my body as my own, and therefore become beautiful.

Not surprisingly, many people think in the same subjective terms. Widespread polls over BME have undoubtedly determined that our mods have given us confidence (which numerous subjects in Susan Bishop's poll cited as their own means of becoming 'beautiful'), as conveniently displayed HERE. Speaking in generalities here, it is commonly found that finding beauty in yourself is perceived as a positive value - and consequently left us baffled at the majority of society's violent rejection of mods, from the minor to the extreme, as disgusting/undesirable/wrong/dangerous/fill in the blank.

And it is the word 'dangerous' - so often used in this context - that perplexed us the most in this amazing instance of near-global human hypocrisy. Why was that? Well, simply because ongoing and accepted history decrees that beauty is a dangerous thing.

Of course, beauty itself is a non-value that defies definition: it has been weighted by such diverse views as to often be given opposing values. Ancient philosophers have tried to formulate a kind of moral equation out of it, i.e.: what is beautiful is good. Enter the clich�s: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If what is beautiful equates what is good, then the reverse is also an axiom - what is good is beautiful - and good has been scrabbled over by utilitarians, empiricists and romantics alike. A similar way of thinking can be applied for the more flowery descriptions of beauty, like Keats' words "Beauty is truth, truth beauty".

("To me," I said, "an intimacy with the planes of your own body is good. Isn't that enough?" "You forget," Anna told me, "that beauty is an utterly societal device � and illusion.")

In modern times we have veered away from abstract, non-concrete terms and newly quantified what was previously perceived as inquantifiable. Plastic surgeons are asked directly by clients to "make them beautiful", and have created a formula for accomplishing this task: a higher forehead, higher cheekbones and a strong jaw. One Stephen Marquardt has electronically and proportionally designed the ideal attractive face, as pictured below:


Image credit: http://www.beautyanalysis.com/

("Marquardt designed his mask based on the principle that beauty is merely a measure for one's humanness, though," Anna said. "Would body modification be described as a deference from humanness then, or would it be a celebration of it?" I asked. She answered, "I was expecting you to ask that.")

Scientists have designed and carried out studies that determine a human's appraisal of beauty is a matter of cold, straight hormones: it's all about one's health and vitality, one's fertility and capacity to pass on their genes. This sounds very primal in most respects - I supposed we haven't evolved as much as we would have liked - and I'd like to disregard this truth in favour of analyzing the far more complex human mind: beauty is a ruling factor for many, causing depressions, geysers of emotions, etc, etc, etc.

("Many people are attracted to people with visible tattoos," I pointed out [as discussed by Shannon Larratt in his column]. She asks of me, "Is it the person they are attracted to, or is it the sensation surrounding tattoos that causes it?" "Does what they think really matter?" I fire back)

Therefore: Though beauty in the eye of the outside beholder is given prominent importance, it all eventually boils down to beauty in the eyes of oneself.

And this brings us back to ourselves, to body modification, and to danger.

Truth now � beauty has always been a dangerous quest of the self. The obvious modern example is that of eating disorders, a severe neurological and pathological problem heightened by absurdly astronomical physical expectations presented by the omnipresence of media. But this juxtaposition of danger over beauty is not a modern development � in the eighteenth century, belladonna was used to dilate pupils to an extreme, "sensual" state. A vermilion rouge whose primary components were mercury and sulphur caused a documented loss in teeth and severe gum recession. The lead in the white powder some aristocrats used on their faces and necks resulted in some "mysterious and unexplained deaths". The ancient Chinese custom of foot binding may seem archaic, but a single glance at our consciously self-torturous high heeled shoes might have you thinking differently. The search for a satisfactory sense of beauty apparently has yielded some painful aftereffects that we people of modern tim es feel we have the authority of disapproving of and scoffing at.

("Hindsight is always 20/20," I said, "but I think body modification is slightly different." "Is it?" Anna asked. "What is the difference between the trendy Botox and Radiance injections, and saline injections, or implants?")

The difference, though subtle, is indeed there, as we both eventually conceded. For one, Botox, Radiance and other lovely products are a general signal of the user's intense dissatisfaction with oneself, whereas our own mods are experiments of ourselves and a physical manifestation of our own unique brand of beauty � satisfaction. While the former products are widely accepted and publicly furthered by high-end fashion magazines, a great portion of the population intensely reviles the body modification subculture. The truth of the matter is � perhaps they could learn something from us.

The entire reason for why any kind of cosmetic surgery exists stems from the client's innate displeasure with him/herself. Forever fixing, primping, adding, reducing, firming, and changing, our entire culture is, by nature, dissatisfied with itself and never quite confident enough in what they've made or altered of their beauty � enough so as to finally put down the mirror and declare that they are beautiful. By stark contrast, we the modded, are by majority proud of ourselves and what we have made ourselves to be (the sum of our lives � scars as Anna said). How is it that we are the ones to be looked down upon in this social hierarchy?

(Anna said, "The truth of it is that � ")

- mainstream society has claimed an atrociously undisputed monopoly on the definition of beauty, hiding it away within itself to suit its purposes, and possessing an authority as to make its monopoly possibly even law �

(" � hence the senselessly discriminatory laws standardizing and preventing certain facets of modification.")

There is a distinct chasm between a protection of one's health, security and human rights (example: APP guidelines), and between a selfish protection of that senseless monopoly.

("So what does this make its role to you?" Anna asked of me. "How do you justify what it is that you do?")

For myself, my justification and logic rests in my rejection of that monopoly, and in my rejection of a mold. Do I want beauty to be predetermined by something as passionless and mathematical as mere agreeable, non-denominational and inoffensive proportions? No. Body modification, is, in a sense, my reclamation of the aspect of humanity indelibly imbued in diversity and perspective, the celebration of ourselves.

(It's just..." I said to Anna after she had her first ink done, "beautiful.")