At A Glance
Author	Rebekah
Contact	[email protected]
IAM	rebekah
When	N/A

Her instructions on How to Win the Game are BAD sportsmanship!!

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged
--Luke 6:37

A bigot recently wrote that people who choose to modify themselves must not be in our right minds.I'm honestly hesitant to link to Erin Simovic, the author of this smut, because she's probably proud of her article and I hate to add to her Google hits. It's important, however, that the reader see that I'm not twisting Ms. Simovic's words (below, in italics).

Her family is probably proud of her -- forgetting, of course, the fundamental values that we're supposed to be teaching our children: namely, that we're not supposed to judge people by the way they look, but by their actions. "It takes a village," and if the author of "How to win at the game that is America" had been paying attention to the other villagers instead of trying to cookie-cutter one Miss America after another, she might have noticed some pretty neat actions by modified people.

The author's friends and family are probably rolling with unkind glee at some of the many responses that the article has evoked. After all, none of her other articles have garnered such attention. (Actually, with the exception of her piece on courting, most of her articles receive no attention whatsoever.) Furthermore, some of the responses don't contain the best grammar or spelling. Note, though, that her opinion was supposed to be that of a professional, and her grammar and spelling left a bit to be desired.

The author is a self-proclaimed "sheltered American" who proclaims in an earlier article that "it's general ignorance that really gets me, the blind willingness to incorporate any oddball fact into one's opinion." She conveniently forgot that when she wrote her piece that judges others, trying to convince the reader that her opinion is a [n oddball] fact.

What is the point of extreme fashion statements? There has to be a point? What's the point of choosing your clothing from Sears or from Vogue, from wearing Steve Maddens or Dr Martens or Birkenstocks? Of hoops versus clip-ons? The husband of one of my best friends thinks it's barbaric that people get their ears pierced. He is, however, unfailingly polite to everyone, whether they are as unmodified as my fiance; (who's idea of body art is a picture on his T-shirt) or as heavily made up, tattooed, and pierced as some of the kids who buy vinyl from his record store. This man is the son of a leader in the field of pediatric dentistry; perhaps it was Senior's compassion for children that helped get the right message through to his son.

I am being polite, mind you. I would have used "freakish," but I figured that wouldn't be politically correct. This is polite? For the most part, I'll keep personal attacks to myself. However: Does your mother know what kind of a sarcastic little brat she raised? If we were on the same coast, I'd try to get in touch with her mother, to ask her myself.

Now before anyone jumps all over me about not judging the book by its cover (blah, blah, blah), let's think about this practically and rationally. And then we'll think about it my way. At least she realizes that she's not practical or rational.

Why would anyone, in his right mind that is, choose to alienate themselves from society in such a way? You can't tell me that mohawks look respectable for job interviews. I conclude, then, that these individuals either want to rebel from society or are simply not in their right minds. This isn't Stepford; this is America.

We're not in our right minds, you say? On any given day, businesspeople in suits, doctors and nurses in scrubs, residents with large diamond rings, farmers, motorcyclists, grandmothers and high-tech workers stroll through the black, double-glass doors at Easy Choppers and Tattoos of Bellevue, WA. We're not good role models? "Even police officers have visited to get badges, bikes and eagles etched onto their skin." Attorneys and doctors and their sons are getting tattooed. This, of course, is not a reason unto itself to get tattooed; duplicating someone's individuality makes one as much of an individual as those thousands of "individual" Madonna and Cyndi Lauper wannabes in the 1980s. The point is self-expression, not to look like everyone else. The author of "How to win at the game" doesn't understand that.

I don't see decoration as automatically equaling alienation. The body modification community -- and we are a community -- has our share of deadbeats and losers, as does every other segment of society. We also have doctors, educators, lawyers, and just about every other profession of today's society.

I'm sure, to some overly sensitive person, my "I love nerds" T-shirt is offensive. Only because the nerds don't love her back; I'm sure that Ms. Simovic would be most disgruntled to learn that the most modified among my friends is probably the most successful, in both his financial and his personal life.

Sure, world peace is one step closer after I paint on my gothic makeup. Why don't we have these folks as Miss America contestants? A lovely woman whom I know quite well (who, incidentally, has one small hoop in each ear and that's ALL) told me that she looked at the criteria excluding potential Miss Americas way back before she was a Mrs. She met five of the six exclusions (because one could not have both square AND rounded shoulders). Never mind that she was pretty, and bubbly, and brilliant, and really could have used the scholarship money -- and this just underscores my desire to see people judged by their merits and not by their mirrors. I expect to be rated by my work ethics, my integrity, my long history of volunteer work (I began before Ms. Simovic was born) and perhaps by my hard-earned Bachelor's in Business and my 3.9+ GPA in business school -- not by the face that my biology-major mom planned or even by the tattoos that I chose.

Instead, they ought to focus on making real efforts to change what they don't like about society. By real efforts I am referring to, for instance, volunteering at a nature camp to teach kids about the effects of pollution on our environment. This is in sharp contrast to, say, wearing a studded dog collar and pants held together by safety pins. Instead of declaring what people "ought to" do, perhaps Ms. Simovic should consider thinking outside the box: why CAN'T a person do both? (Does Ms. Simovic do either?)

I don't want the nonconformists to go away (because if we did, she'd run out of people to laugh at), I just want them, in one way or another, to make some positive contribution to society, rather than generate negative attention. Define "positive." Wait, I'll do it for you. Many people with tattoos and piercings are active in peaceful political causes; I've met many of them. A prominent member of our community is a teacher whose time off-season has been spent working on documentaries for educational television channels, and at summer camps where she teaches photography. She probably leaves the studded dog collar for her dog, but probably only because it would hide her tattoo collar. Punk's Earnest New Mission, published: January 4, 2004, talks about how tattooed and pierced musicians are offering support (emotional, in the form of "therapy rock" and financial) to anti-suicide hotlines. A tattooist in Ontario recently donated a kidney; her small act saved the life of a dear friend. A dad in Maryland uses his tattoo to raise awareness in autism.

Unfortunately, we live in a very judgmental society. Our clothes, makeup, hair and possessions communicate to others who we are and what we value. If Ms. Simovic thinks this attitude is so "unfortunate," they why would she want to propagate it?

I've worked for doctors and lawyers and college professors. Until my current position, no one cared if the tattoos on my arms showed. My current employer, the first in a new field, checked my references and was told by one, a manager at an Ivy League college, that as long as one could "get past" my tattoos, I was a great worker, an asset to her department. I was hired contingent on my promise to keep my tattoos covered, out of respect for the company owner's clients. His company, his prerogative.

For some, dressing up to look like circus members from the underworld is one way to protest this. I guess you could say that the rest of us choose to play the game. I didn't know that Life is a game... If it is, then perhaps the name of the game is money. World's First Walking, Talking Advertisement Makes a Big Splash brought five hundred new customers via its "billboard"'s tattoo. The author herself doesn't know much about games; she spent an afternoon at a sporting event, watching boors drink instead of watching the game itself, so that she'd have something to write about. Saint Mother Theresa didn't have anything on Erin Holier than Thou (and thou, and thou...)

If one takes the time to read her columns, one will see that her attempt at humor is a very thinly disguised cover for the right to insult people. This is surprising, considering her anger at "finger-pointers" using the Greek system as scapegoats for everything but not looking for solutions to problems. Given a choice between something visibly different and a Bitch in Greek's clothing (no offense meant to dog lovers or to Greeks), I'll take what I can recognize any day of the week.

I once heard a possibly misinformed psychologist on a talk show state that people who modify themselves have low self-esteem. We wear our emotions on our skins for all to see; couldn't that be considered empowering? Indeed, in Australia, "...tattoos have suddenly found favour with young, fashion-conscious Tasmanian women." There are places in the USA where tattoo parties are taking the place of Tupperware parties.

While that may go against their desires to destroy society as we know it, if they truly want to get any sort of message to the rest of us, I would recommend they consider losing the spikes. Not everyone who gets a piercing is going to save the world. By the same token, not everyone who runs for office is going to ruin the world. When Kobe Bryant was first accused of rape, the press kept insisting that he was "one of the good guys... doesn't have any tattoos;" now that he's got tattoos, does this guarantee his guilt? Did the alleged victim "ask for it" because she has a tattoo on her ankle? If we spent more time judging people by their actions and not by their looks or their incomes, we would have an easier time, I believe, distinguishing Right from Wrong.

What petrifies me most about this article is that Ms. Simovic is a pharmaceutical student. She is prejudiced (judging someone before she knows him or her) based on appearance, and she's going to be dealing with the public. If she interviewed at a business I ran, I wouldn't hire her, because her narrow-mindedness would cost me clients. What kind of judgment call will she make on the clientele? At what point will she make a comment that she thinks is funny -- which insults either the patient or his or her child? No, I wouldn't want her working for me.

I should actually thank Erin Simovic for writing her narrow-minded piece; it got me angry enough to write one of my own. Thanks to all those who wrote the articles that the BMEzine.com newsfeed picked up; your words spoke volumes more than my own.