Gather round, modded adolescents and 20-somethings, and listen closely! This is particularly for your age group, but other people cna tune in too if they want. Anyway, I am about to tell you something that might come across as condescending, insensitive, or just plain mean...or, it could change your life. You decide. So you might want to sit down for this one!
At A Glance Author formerly known as SpikeyAnnie Contact formerly known as [email protected] When N/A Once upon a time, I was a regular contributor to this amazing web site- and how it has grown! Congratulations Shannon and everyone else who keeps it up and running. Like all of you, modifications were a huge part of my life. Hell, they were my life, in so many ways. I think I have had every single facial and ear piercing between one and ten times, in gauges from 18 to 00. At many points in my late teens, the number of piercings in my face exceeded the number of years I had been on this planet.
Maybe that's not such a good thing, hm? I loved my mods and was convinced they made me a happier and better person, convinced that I had found the ultimate road to self-discovery and I was going to ride down that road until the end. I acquired 11 tattoos in the span of about 4 years. I had enough jewelry to pierce an entire baseball team. People stereotyped me constantly, hardly ever referred to me except by either a nickname given to me because of my piercings and spiky hair, or worse yet, they wouldn't even look at me. I convinced myself that this was what I wanted and that I didn't care.
I was so intent on Finding Myself that I forgot about the rest of the world and that they do matter. When you're an artist, the rest of the world is your audience, and you should always respect them at least on some level. Well, I don't think I respected my audience, and I don't think they understood what I was trying to do. My deep, meaningful, neo-tribal rites of passage became typical teenage/college kid bullshit in their eyes. How could you possibly find yourself with a piercing that millions of others have gotten before you? How does that make you unique and special? And how the fuck are you going to get a job?
I realize now that these are all valid questions. A matter of eight months ago, I blew them off as something that would never happen to me. "Nah," I scoffed. "I'll always love my lip ring. And I'll always love the way I look. If they don't want to hire me, then screw them and I'll find someone who will hire me!"
I suppose this is a realistic enough attitude about a job but I didn't see that I was slowly closing out so many options in life by continuing to look the way I did. Take your typical Goth/skater androgynous being and slap a few tattoos and piercings on this person and that was me. A year ago I had no hair because I decided to shave it off just to see what would happen. I wore gigantic pants that were 10 inches too big for my tiny waist and I hid behind black band t-shirts.
I had been doing this piercing thing for, more or less, seven years, and this Baggy Black thing for about a decade. That's a long time to carry a particular image or style, don't you think? It's like wearing a uniform for ten years which is only a little less than half my life. I'm not even 23 yet so my perspective on this is different from someone who is older, but for me, living at the pace that I'm at now, seven years is like an eternity, let alone ten!
Anyway, in the spring of 2004 something clicked into place that wasn't there before. I got into film and sound design and immersed myself in audiovisual delights. Picking up a camera was like being touched by the hand of God. Looking through that lens, it didn't matter what I looked like. Everything made sense. I shot my first roll of 16mm film and nearly cried with the joy of seeing something I created on that big screen in the classroom. I worked on post project after post project, getting my hands on every scrap of unmixed audio I could. I was unstoppable and when you saw my name in credits, it didn't matter what I looked like.
By early June of 2004, I realized that it didn't matter what I looked like because there are things about me that are really fucking cool, that nobody ever sees because they can't see past this image I have constructed for myself. No matter how much I tried to convince myself that it doesn't matter, it began to matter. A lot. Not only was I getting called "sir" quite often due to my skinny (read: built like Kate Moss!) stature, big clothes, and short hair, but I am sure most people assumed that having more than one facial piercing was more common among males (and it may be; I don't know). This bothered me because while I don't care about gender that much, the bottom line is I am not male and do not identify that way, nor have I ever. I suddenly looked back on the past decade of my life and realized that hey, I started this bullshit. And I don't even remember why; it just seemed to fit me at some point in my life and I found I could not get out of it. Well, something had to change.
It bothered me that nobody ever saw what I was really like because they were so focused on my hair, clothes, piercings, and the tattoos on my chest and my neck. I slowly realized that I liked most of my tattoos but not all of them, and that no, I did not want to die someday with a bat on my neck and a skull and bones on my chest. It started to slowly break my heart that for more than half a decade I'd hidden behind this stupid little shield of isolation. I began to think about what would happen if I were to get my first job on a professional film set:
"Hey, where's that second mag, I need it, we're about ready to start rolling."
"Oh, the kid with the piercings has it."
"Oh okay. (snort of laughter)"
I tried to picture myself again, holding a couple million bucks' worth of Panavision equipment, souped up with Primo lenses, following the action beautifully, gears of the tripod head whirring, the camera purring away. Getting the shots, or even just pulling focus for somebody else. Or mixing postproduction audio all night for someone's amazing film. And slowly, the person who I thought I was going to turn into, fell apart. In its place, I saw someone who looked- for lack of a better word- more ordinary. And I realized then that if I looked more "ordinary", people might look me in the eye when they talked to me, they might call me by name, and they might actually hire me to operate camera or boom for them.
"My lip ring's hurting my teeth anyway," I thought. "And I'd really like to sleep flat on my ears again without having these spikes dig in. Gee...I could start over a little and create a new image, just like I did back in seventh grade!"
Forget everything I moved towards as a modified individual. This was my true transformation; going backwards in an effort to look more approachable and maybe even blend in a bit for once instead of sticking out like a sore thumb. And it was oftentimes terrifying. I forgot all my color theory and in the anxiety of trying to wear a shade that was NOT black, I forgot what "goes" with orange. Or stripes? Does this go? I hadn't had to ask myself that in years, and that was just the clothes! It was like a second adolescence in many ways. I felt awkward and afraid at first, but equally certain that I needed to do something different. And in a big way!
Call me a sellout, but I started taking out my piercings gradually until I was down to a pair of 6g lobe piercings, a 12g second lobe piercing in my left ear, and a 12g tongue barbell (hey, I just couldn't bear to let that one go, don't ask me why!). And every time something new came out, someone new would talk to me like I was actually human. Little kids weren't afraid of me. People were nice to me. My hair continues to grow out from its brutal �" crew cut and I realize that this is the liberation I was seeking in the first place. I wear clothes from Old Navy and the Gap and I love every minute of it.
My mother took me shopping and I slowly worked my way up: first, black t-shirts that actually fit. Then some new pants that didn't sag all over the place. New sneakers. Less eyeliner. No more black nail polish. A simple military-style canvas backpack instead of a black one covered in band patches. She was overjoyed for me and I was stunned. I couldn't believe I had finally broken out of this, but I also was crushed that it had taken me so long.
The final frontier was undergoing laser treatment for the tattoos I do not like. I had my first session so far and I can tell you a few things. The first thing is, my mom hates the tattoos so much, that she is paying for most of it, which is great. Second of all, it is way more expensive than when you get the tattoo, because it takes many sessions, not just one. And finally, it hurts more too!
The pain isn't anything I can't stand, because I know it's for a good cause. But it's nothing like the momentary pinprick of a tattoo machine needle. It's a world apart from that. Regardless, I plan to fill my EMLA prescription and go all the way through until the disliked tattoos are gone. I'm actually wondering what will happen first: if the bat tattoo on my neck will completely disappear, or if my hair will grow and cover it!
Now I walk down the street and unless I was wearing short sleeves, you might not be able to tell that I'm still "one of you" in a sense. And I say "in a sense" because for the most part, I still enjoy tattoos and may get a few more before I get all old and creaky, but it's not what it once was to me. But that's okay. I guess we all grow out of things, right?
I could look at this two ways and so could you. I could see it as a tragic, heartbreaking story about a misled adolescent girl who paid dearly for a few frivolous years of self-exploration. After all, I can still see the holes in the middle of my ears from my 6g conch piercings. For all I know they might never heal up. And I can still see the little divots in my nostrils from when they were pierced at 10g. The tattoos might not come off 100 percent and I could be left with some sort of scar.
But for me, I now have a chance at an easier life. I'm not saying that anybody here is definitely making a terrible choice about his or her form of self-expression, but what I'm saying is that you need to think hard about not just who you are, but who you are going to be. It's not worth losing out on an amazing job opportunity because of a bunch of piercings. God only knows how many opportunities I lost out on because people couldn't get past my appearance. So I chose to meet them halfway and try something: playing by the rules a little more.
It's worked for me and I think that says something about people my age who are in their twenties, giddy with the absence of parents and the vast array of tattoo and piercing shops in their college's town. We don't think about the future as much as we should.
I am paying a higher price now to look just like everybody else, than I ever did to look different. And I don't care how many people think I am betraying a community, selling out, or simply being a dick by writing about how modification can more or less ruin your life. Yes, it can ruin you. It will leave a mark on your skin and your life. People will treat you differently and if you can't handle it, you need to realize it now before it's too late.
Thousands of dollars and years later, you might find yourself mentally tallying up the number of times that you were never addressed by name. Parents stopped asking you to babysit for their kids. People turned you down for jobs and wouldn't explain why. You have to remember that you made this choice to modify yourself, and there is no shame in backing out. And yeah, it's not fair that you're treated that way, but it is not a perfect world and we ALL have to do our part.
Or, let's say you're maybe sixteen, seventeen now, and the world belongs to you and you're not even done with high school. So how do you know what's out there? You don't. But let me tell you that you're not doing yourself any favors by adamantly pledging your allegiance to a single subculture, or spending your parents' money on 0g plugs. I could have bought, shot, and processed over 1000 feet of film with the money I spent on all this stuff, trust me!
Stretching your ears is all fun and games until you realize that you have a small and beautiful face with these big ears, and does that really look okay? Maybe to you, but it didn't look okay for me, so I changed it. Getting your nostril pierced is ridiculously painful and might be worth it until you realize that it takes you 10 minutes to blow your nose. And tattooing yourself with India ink and a razor blade may seem like a great way to explore the threshold of pain and consciousness and all those wonderful things.
But in reality, it's every laser-wielding dermatologist's nightmare, and it's an embarrassing moment when you're lying in bed with the first person who has ever seen past your pierced face and actually treated you like you were worth something, and then he asks, "What's that on your stomach, did you do that yourself?" It's enough to make you want to walk home wrapped in hotel sheets at three in the morning instead of explaining for 20 minutes that you went through this phase and you're basically embarrassed.
And now you've wasted half an hour of your life because of two things that maybe you shouldn't have done in the first place. At least that's how it was for me. My piercings served their purpose: they gave me confidence on the inside that needed room to move outward, so there went the jewelry. They gave me something to hide behind that needed to come down so I could get a goddamn job or two. THIS is priceless, guys.
As for my tattoos that are being removed, I cannot stress enough that you need to take your personal interests and passions out of context. Remove the time stamp from them. Think about them as if you have known them all your life and will continue to do so. If they don't fall into that category and you don't think it will still make you smile when you're 90 years old on your deathbed, for fuck's sake don't get it tattooed on your neck.
I could easily mourn for the years I lost to narrow-minded things. It would have been fine to be a Goth or a rivethead or a punk if I'd only rounded it out with a few other interests and dare I say obsessions, but I didn't do that. I think of all the other great music and movies that I missed because I was so stuck on one thing and it kinda kills me. I still love industrial music and will never stop listening to it, but it's not my life the way it once was, and honestly I prefer it that way. I don't think anybody should ever get stuck doing just one thing.
When I was 17 I was convinced that my parents were wrong and I was right. That everybody else was full of shit and I knew it all. Now I know that you can love a band without getting their logo tattooed on your ankle. You can appreciate the aesthetics of a subculture without clearing out the rest of your closet and giving away your nice brand name sneakers to Goodwill. You can question gender roles without hacking off your hair or wearing gobs of makeup. You can push the boundaries of the world without subjecting yourself to stares, rude treatment, harassment, discrimination, silence, and typecasting.
Or you can do it your way, which might be different from mine. It's your choice. And you ALWAYS have a choice. You can go forward or backward. Going backward is harder, more painful, and more expensive, but it has its merits too. Going forward can be good, just realize that the world may never completely open up to heavily tattooed and pierced individuals. You have to see the entire timeline of your life and everything that goes on it, as an ongoing process. Understand what was good for you then, and why it might not be now, or vice versa. The clock is ticking. You can't get so caught up in defining yourself that you forget about the people who haven't even met you yet but might be hiring you someday.
Then again, if I'd never gone down the road of modification in the first place, I would have never truly understood this, from the bottom of my heart. You might not recognize me these days. My hair is nearly covering my ears. My remaining piercings look pretty "normal" and I dress either like a working professional, Katherine Hepburn, or your 11-year old kid sister! But I've been there and back, and I can tell you that in either direction, there's a price to pay.
Listen to your parents. Instead of getting that scorpion tattoo that you absolutely need to have in order to be a complete person before the age of 25, take your friends out to dinner and a movie. Realize that you are unique because of what is in your mind and your heart, not because of anything on (or in) your skin.
I'm telling you this because I see people who look the way I used to and I wonder if they're happy. It's okay to admit that you don't like all your tattoos, and then to try to do something about it. It's okay to take out a piercing because it hurts or you feel like it's not you somehow. But when you're not even paying your own rent yet, try not to limit your options by getting stuck in one particular image!
Think about what's out there in the world, and all the amazing people you will meet. I met Roger Ebert for crying out loud. I met a Dolby representative. They might have never given me a second glance if I'd looked like just another member of the Goth Squad or a member of an 80s punk band. You have to remain open to what other people think. Take it from me: it could make or break you.
If you want to blow me off and resign yourself to having to work 300 percent as hard as everyone else because you must have full sleeves before you're even old enough to rent a car, that's okay too. But don't say I didn't warn you.
I'm not sure what an article like this is going to stir up but I feel like I have to talk about the other side of things a little bit, now that I've seen both. I feel now that I am constantly evolving as a person and it's awesome. It means the world to me to not have to answer to "Did that hurt?", to not have people tugging on my sleeve wanting to talk about the band whose artwork is on my shirt. To sleep on my side comfortably and be able to play sports again without worrying about digging a stainless steel ring out of my skin if I get hit in the face with the ball. Body modification set me free, but in a very unexpected way. And I want all of you to know about it so that maybe you can learn something too.