At A Glance Author Blueamazon Contact [email protected] When N/A Ok, let me start by first introducing you all to a little information about myself. I am a 21-year-old female that live in Scotland, United Kingdom. I am a student at a local university of which my stats suggests that I am one of the top students in my life science course. I do not do drugs, I have recently stopped smoking, I drink very seldom and I am a strict vegan.
I am also quite heavily pierced, but all of my piercings (apart from my ears) are on my body, and therefore hidden. What this piece of writing is about is the different ways in which people see, react and treat me depending on what I wear.
You see I am a relatively quiet individual that keeps herself to herself who for 80% of the time dresses in a very conservation manner (and therefore, all of my non standard piercings are hidden form the public eye). In times like this people are very warm, and receptive towards me, they are not afraid to approach me and are more than happy to help if I approach them. In other words I am treated as 'part of the crowd'. It probably helps that I am very innocent looking.
Now flip over to the other 20% of the time, mostly in summer, when everyone is wearing string tops because of the heat. At this time you will see my nape piercing, the top six or eight stainless balls resting on my back on either side of my spine (from the top half of my spinal ladder). People react completely differently to me. They avoid looking into my eyes if I approach them (whether they are sale assistants or not), some will cross over and walk on the other side of the street if they were walking behind me, after a lot of whispering to their friend, in general people treat me as if I'm a subhuman individual. They automatically assume that I am into mind-bending drugs, smoke like a chimney and drink like a fish. They also probably believe that I have an IQ of about 20 and therefore hold no job and am living of of the state government. Even though I am still the same girl that they had happily been chatting to a few weeks past.
Now what they see if a very small proportion of the amount of work that I have had done, can you imagine what I would be treated like if I showed even more of my mods to them?! Now add on the new mods that I have had since last summer, some flesh staples ( only three at the moment, but planning on getting a further four in the coming months) and hopefully some scarification work on my shoulder blade, then you are generally entering a largely uncharted area of reactions. I'm not saying that this city is a closed minded community where the residents are of a older generation where even the discussion of sex is taboo, no this is a large city where there are more students (i.e. young people) than there is per working head of population. Just because I am interested in piercings that are generally unheard of in this area of the country, surface bars are still unheard of here, does that mean that I should be treated differently than say the other young individual with a lot of f acial work done ( which appears to be more acceptable to them than the few small pierces that I have done).
True I did expect people to have varied reactions to my piercings; it was all thought through before I got any of the work done, I know how the world works. Some piercings will hinder your chances of getting the job you want etc, even though you can rant and rave about free expression all you want � the world is as it is. You will still get judged on what you look like. Employers will discriminate against the modified. I accept that is how it is.
What I had not bargained for was the acceptability of one piercing/modification over another. And unfortunately, it seems to me that I am choosing all the 'wrong ones'. People with mods have fought hard for acceptance and they have won that battle to a small degree, maybe not in the too long distant future the same can be said of the mods that I have.
At the moment, I must shrug my shoulders and tell myself that they have a right to what they think even if they don't have a right to treat me the way they do. My mods gave me a confidence in myself that I never knew existed. I don't know how to put it into words, but they have. As a child I was brought up in a very restrictive conservative environment in which everything I did was never good enough for my father. This eroded away any belief I had ever had in my abilities as a person. There is still evidence of this today in my conservative dress, but since I had started getting my mods I have slowly gained the realisation that I am in control and can do whatever I feel is right. I am slowly expressing on my exterior body how I see myself on the inside, even though people do not see it ( nor do I wish to tell people about it, these modification is my method of becoming me) these are for me and nobody else, so for the very few weeks of summer that I get prejudged and found l acking I tell myself that these things that are deemed ugly and self mutilation, are healing and they are me.
Thank you for listening,
luv Blueamazon xxxx