9781422273845

To “modify” something means to change it, and humans have been modifying their bodies for a very long time. Throughout this book, you’ll come across examples of ancient peoples who practiced body modification, as well as contemporary indigenous groups who still do. The current popularity of body art in Western countries dates to the late 1980s, when people began exploring body modification as a means of self-expression. The trendiness of tattoos, piercings, and other “body mods” is worrying to some observers. Some critics say it’s just a fashionable form of mutilation. The psychologist Corinne Sweet went so far as to describe body modification as anger at the world turned against the self. But to others, body modification is about empowerment—a way of undermining oppressive social expectations. In the words of scholar Victoria Pitts, body modifications reject “the classical ideal of the skin as a pristine, smooth, closed envelope for the self.” Body modders also undercut the assumption that the human body is permanent and unchanging. After all, the argument goes, bodies are shaped by their environments all the time in all kinds of ways, so why shouldn’t some of it be under the individual’s control? Pitts observes that people who feel disenfranchised or oppressed may experience an increased sense of autonomy and belonging that stems from their body art. The theoretical arguments for and against body art are interesting, but body modification has a practical side, too.

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