Years ago an old Romanian Gypsy looked at me, then he looked at my left ear and said "You must be a really strong woman! With so many earrings in your ear it can't be any different!" He was joking, obviously, as this mischievous smile hang on his lips and there were some suspicious sparks in his eyes. With a little help from someone who knew English it was explained to me that among the Gypsies the amount of the earrings a given person wore showed their social status and how they were perceived by others � one earring for a normal guy, more than that for the braver and stronger ones. To them it actually meant something!
At A Glance Author Ania Contact [email protected] IAM deadly pale When N/A And what my earrings meant to me back then? They were a sign of rebellion to some degree � I was a wannabe punk/goth kid and deeper into theory of anarchism than any other punk kid I knew. They could have been a sign of defiance, along with my torn clothes and a leather jacket that was way too worn off and ugly to not make my mother feel embarrassed whenever her friends saw me on the street. They were to show off, let us admit it honestly now � I liked how surprised people were when they saw my earrings. They were a source of amusement and irritation � I have been a strange combination of a person who looked like a troublemaker and yet had good grades and eventually graduated from the university with honors (still with my earrings in and this twisted smile that made people comment on how I looked like someone who did not give a damn about graduation gowns, honors and all other B.S.) But did my earrings mean I felt strong, powerful or self-confident? Hardly!
When a new girl appeared in one of my anthropology classes at the university, everyone was stunned for a while. She had lots of earrings! And soon enough I was told about it over and over again and it was kinda suggested to me that maybe I should get some new earrings to "be even" with the new classmate of ours. By then I was smart and sensible enough to know that the amount of stuff we are wearing does not prove anything, certainly it does not prove our "coolness factor" and it certainly does not say anything about how unique or original we are. These things are inherent, we are born with them and nothing you do to get "kewler" will not change that. But the peer pressure was there for a longish while.
The same pressure, whenever we are aware of that or not, is still present in our lives. Our neighbor gets a new car and we kind of feel that probably we should do the same, just to prove some mysterious point. A work colleague goes to a great holiday resort and we want to do the same, just to feel we can do just this thing and somehow prove another point. All these small pressures are all around us, bombarding us and forcing us to go forward but go withuot much thinking.
I guess the same pressure factor applies to body modification. Exposed to more and more mods on everyday basis, faced with new people who somehow seem to look so much better than us or be braver than we have ever been, we begin to feel how much we need to do to ourselves, how much we "need" or "must" modify ourselves because only then we will finally feel "beautiful and the way we have always wanted to be". Is it really true? Does the amount of mods we manage to acquire over the time really make us the persons we really are?
I guess it is not only my piercer who is daily faced with people coming over and asking to dermal punch their ears to have as much "stretched" ears as possible at the minimal cost and efforts on their side. All they want to have is a pair of nicely stretched ears, capable of containing a smart pair of tunnels or eyelets which you can see through. It looks so great after all. Do all of them know pros and cons of such a decision? Did they consider what might happen to their ears if they ever decide to stretch further or just retire their "see-through" ear piercings? Not really. When denied fulfilling their wish, they just go to another piercer, with less strict ethics and more interest in money to get what they want.
I suspect that it is not only my tattoo artist who is approached by people with not much of an idea about a tattoo they want to get! Hell, there were times when I was one of such people and that is why I eventually ended up with re-doing the least meaningless one of my own tattoos. A wise, ethical tattoo artist will devote some of their time to a person who comes over to get tattooed. They will try to find out something, anything, about a given customer; they will try to see what their customer's taste is like, what they are interested in etc. A good, professional and responsible tattoo artist will take their time to ask questions, to show their art, to give some advice on the subject. Just like stretching, getting a good quality tattoo requires some time.
Body modification subculture is not free of vices that torment the modern culture on all its levels. Also here almost everything is on display, ready to show off and make a "lasting" impression on all people around. It is a paradox that modern culture is so focused on individuality and yet all it is concerned with is making all of us wearing exactly the same products and meeting exactly the same aesthetic.
Nike's commercial tells me "I am what I am" and since it uses images of runners here I am even inclined to believe that, indeed, I am what I am and others must deal with it, impressed by my "originality." But hey, somehow I cannot get rid of the suspicion that this commercial is addressed not only to me but also to many other people out there who also must be "what they are" and if they buy the same stuff I do, soon they will be like me or I, gawd forbids, will be like them! Not good if anyone cares to ask me.
Dove's commercials use images of chubby women to get through to people who do not look like the blond, tanned and thin goddesses from the fashion magazines. At first it can look really great. Finally someone decided to defy the stick-thin image of woman as the only beautiful one and there is a chance that things will change for better, is not there? Maybe I am very cynical but somehow I cannot believe in such a theory. Somehow I think that someone here sensed a good chance for exploiting a good and cashable market niche and just plays on the aesthetics here and now. And we buy it, literally and metaphorically, because who does not want to feel special after all?
Body modification is a part of the modern culture, there is no doubt about it, is there? The great thing about it that it is not only a part of the present but also a substantial part of the past � its roots go back thousands of years ago to the times when no one heard or pondered very hard on the questions of individuality, uniqueness, "being me" etc. Now it is, just like the whole modern culture, allegedly focused on uniqueness and originality and yet somehow manages to produce so many alike looking people.
Sad as it is, all subcultures sooner or later come up with their own "uniforms". It is unavoidable as certain clothes, accessories and behaviors are supposed to establish a bond between members of a given subculture, define them against everyone else, give them a sort of their own identity. This is the good side of the "uniforms" that even rebellious subcultures are not free of. The downside of this phenomenon is that sooner or later if you want to belong and be accepted into a given subculture, you must fit � these clothes, those boots, this haircut, that aesthetics.
But somehow body modification still differs from all other levels of the modern (pop) culture. It is based both "now" and in the distant "then" thus it is able to cross the time barriers to some degree. And this leads me to believe that time is a crucial factor when it comes to juxtaposing quantity and quality.
It is quite easy to acquire many mods in a relatively short time span. You can get a few piercings during one visit to a piercing shop. If you are "tuff" enough, you can get a huge tattoo in one session and enjoy impressive skin coverage ink-wise over a year or two. During one year you can split your tongue, get some impressive size-wise cuttings etc. It is possible, doable and there are people who actually do it, for various reasons. But the question is not "how great it is?" but rather "what's next then?" Does quantity really "rule"?
Quality demands time, sometimes a lot of it. It is a journey through our own thoughts and decision making process; it is a journey through various places and people met on the way. Quality reflects, or at least aims to reflect, who we really are and how we change over the time. It might take years to decide to get this one tiny tattoo done but it can have an almost magical quality of taking you back to the times you were happy, hopeful, healthier, younger etc.
There was a reason behind very stretched ear lobes of the older tribe members back in the "primitive" days; there was a reason why certain tribes did certain things. It is a sign of living in the postmodern times that now we can get whatever we want and, quite often, we do not really put much thought to it. We just want it and we get it; thinking our decisions over comes much later.
In theory, and I am a follower of this theory, there is no bad reason to get modified as all reasons are valid and equally important. But these reasons are so only if they are really yours and you are not indoctrinated into them. Do you want your navel done because you like the way it looks or because everyone else has it? Do you want to have big lobes because you enjoy their look or because you think it will make you look "badass"?
The point is not that a lot of mods is a bad thing. I am far from thinking this way. The point is that when we focus only on quantity of metal, ink, silicon or whatever else in or on us, we might miss something we really should care about � real us. Quantity of the stuff will not add much to who we are; the thoughts put into the whole process, the efforts made on the road to reaching our goal, the research for the right design, placement, safety and health of our body add to quality of our mods and this makes us who we are, become and eventually will be in the future.
If this old Romanian Gypsy saw me now, he would not think of me as a strong woman � almost no earrings in my ears. But I, by means of looking at my hidden piercings, tattoos and scars, know how much I went through to get all of them and how much stronger I do feel and really am these days. If I decided to create an "obligatory list of mods", I do not think it would be really impressive; I do not really know, without some thinking and counting, how many piercings I currently have or how many tattoos I got done so far. Numbers do not count; it is the thoughts, memories, meanings behind them that count and make me somewhat unique. Thus I dare to think that in a sort of battle between quantity and quality of anything, quality always has the upper hand. It is not how much but what we have that actually makes us who we really are for ourselves in the first place.