Where is the line between body modification and body mutilation? Is there a line? Why is a teenage girl carving up her arm like a damned Virginia ham popularly seen as a “call for help,” where as a tattoo or other form of body modification is considered to some as “self expression?” Should each pierced eyebrow be the cause to raise another in concern?
The shop smelled like a bouquet of antiseptic, taco bell, and GQ (by Hugo boss). I quickly sat in the empty red leather booth seat that some how had survived the decades through its prime as a 50’s diner accessory. The floor gleamed with pride; I waved at the mirror image of myself on the floor. Shockingly this tattoo shop—judging by the spotless tiles, sterile equipment, and an excess of latex gloves, was the envy of every hospital in the tri-county area. Paintings of pop-art monsters (werewolf’s, and vampires alike,) flanked me on both sides of my table-less booth, mimicking many of the tattoos that walk out of the place in a given week. A couple of eager, barely legal tattoo hopefuls flipped through the generic catalogue of tattoo possibilities hanging in binders on the adjacent wall. The binders clicked, crashing on top of each other as the young adults haphazardly selected what would soon become their “rebellious reminder of their teen angst” according to Amy Shilton, the more vocal of the two youths. The two young ladies fumbled aimlessly through the seemingly endless selections, until they suddenly stopped, “there! That’s it….that’s exactly it!” exclaimed, what I thought to be the quiet one, “it’s perfect for you!,” exclaimed Amy. They had chosen a black and white tribal imitation of a gecko, for Amy’s friend, and Amy chose a blue dolphin riding over a wave. After signing wavers, and showing I. D.’s they both proceeded to have their rebellion etched into their skin with a pulsing needle. Amy glanced over her raw left shoulder as the tattoo artist made his final touches to the porpous he had just free-handed; Amy glanced at his work, then beemed a silent squell of excitement through clenched teeth at her silent friend, pleased with her new aquatic friend.
The bell above the door clanged as Connie Duke, a regular at Big Daddy’s tattoo shop , entered the shop and joined me in my red leather booth. We discussed the meanings of her numerous tattoos, which cover a small percentage of her body. The most important, she informed me, is the tattoo of the Bellarmine University coat of arms on her right foot. “ It marks a part in my life when I considered dropping out of Bellarmine, I wanted an image that would remind me of the two years of my life I spent at Bellarmine, not just the education I received but also who I was and who I became in those two years, and the people who were a part of my life then.” Says Connie, nostalgically gazing at her inked foot. We spend an hour picking over her many other tattoos and piercings, including her latest—a temporarily (until the swelling goes down) speech impending barbell skewering her tongue, her disapproving mother, and what she calls the “almost therapeutic process of body modification”; She continues to tell me of the process of being tattooed, relating the drafting of a new tattoo design to the creation of art, the excitement and rush before the needle penetrates the skin, and the natural high that follows the completion of being inked.
Our conversation was interrupted when a boy grabbed Connie’s wrist and pointed to the pentacle star tattoo on her arm, as he proclaimed to his friend, now also gauking at Connie’s arm, “I want my star to look like this, except without the banner in the middle.” Connie, annoyed at the interruption, then tells me that regardless of the hindrance in speech or the disapproval her body modifications have caused, the only regret she has is that she” never would have gotten a visible tattoo if I knew that it gave license to “idiot strangers” to touch me.” Though, she does welcome the common bond that having body modifications provide for a wide range of tatted individuals who are eager to share their stories of body modification experiences as well as hear others stories.
The most interesting of tatted individuals I have ever encountered works at my local coffee vendor, Ryan Soeder , a body modification enthusiast, with many tattoos , and piercings, general philosopher of sorts, vegan, weekend piercer, and Calvinist. One morning over coffee, and many cigarettes (on my part, Ryan is some-what straight-edge), Ryan spoke of his views on body modification poignantly and with passionate pride, “the line between mutilation and modification is drawn in the intentions of the client and the perspective of the viewer. Is there a line, yes. The difference between the two is that carving up your wrists can lead to suicide and is a way to kill your self, and has no aesthetic value or benefit, where as a tattoo is easily healed and produces a pleasing result for both the collector and the observer. Body modification is changing your body sometimes forcefully to produce a desired result, like exercise, and bodybuilding is sometimes viewed as a mild form of body modification, where as cosmetic surgery while being viewed as equally acceptable is more extreme. We can carry this mentality on to more parietal forms of body modification, such as tattoo, piercing, and scarification. ” I raised an eyebrow as I blew a smoke ring in the air in confusion, he saw my smoke signal for mental S.O.S. and began to explain the process of using scalpels to carve into the body a design, known as scarification. Then, without missing a step, he continued “Other forms of body mod are more ritualistic, such as suspension , play piercing, and lip skewering. These, I relate to running a marathon in that they take a lot of training (whether physically or mentally/emotionally) to perform and leave the body generally aesthetically unaffected.”
Like an athlete proud and modest of his muscles, Ryan displays his tattoos and other modifications to me, tracing outlines of Chinese cherry blossoms like braille as he told me of his experience with scarification, and the pain he endured to have this design cut into him. He went into such detail about the history and hidden meaning behind the image that I forgot that we were talking about scars he had done to him voluntarily.
The more he spoke the more I admired his vigor, unlike Amy and her quiet friend, Ryan doesn’t continue to modify his body to remind him of his rebellion, he isn’t living the experience, he is experiencing life through each new boundary he pushes his body through, testing it’s and his limitations.
Before leaving the table to attend to some other early bird customers, he told me, “the permanency of a tattoo is an eternal reminder of a temporary feeling. Just because you don’t always agree with or appreciate the designs on your body doesn’t mean you don’t appreciate the feelings behind them and your reasons for doing it in the first place.”
