Body modification

The Ethical Question of Surgery

I started this one and never got to finish it, so here it is again....

I learned today that there are people who want to amputate a limb. Want to. Not “have to.” Not “are better off to do.” Want to.

I’ve never heard of that before. Not just that, but people who willfully split their tongue in half or install horns under their skin. Being a woman who has had a septum piercing, I consider myself a lightweight-but-beyond-navel-piercing bodymod fan. But this was not something you could do in a tattoo parlor. This required a surgeon. A very open minded surgeon.

I have read a bit on Ron Athey and love his work. I remember reading about Fakir. Don’t even ask me his last name, but if you’ve read anything at all about body mod, especially it’s tribal routes, you will know who I mean. And I remember the man who was terminally ill and turned his pain around to make it pleasure and became a super masochist. And the babes. The gorgeous bodies who tattoo or pierce to display their bodies with decoration, to add a tough exterior to their perfect, youthful flesh.

The main reasons to do body mod: Art. Tribalization (be it mimicking the tribal community or reverting to an older culture). Masochism. Kink. Vanity. I’m sure there may be more reasons.

Okay, so some body modification people go under the knife and take away a fully functional part of their body.

Crazy.

Or is it? We accept (as a society) people who go under the knife to increase the size of their breasts, extract parts of their cheeks or buttocks for no reason except looks, or inject into their bodies foreign material to make their faces look "better" or "younger."

These people can't walk into a parlour and change their bodies in this way like one would change their hair color. They must find a surgeon. An open minded one.

Has modern society gone full circle? Has the ritual of tribal modification evolved, faded, and then devolved into "beauty surgery"?

Well, I guess it hasn't even faded. About a century ago, if corsets didn't do the trick, women would have a rib removed to look thin. And the corsets, while not surgery, were so extreme in cutting off circulation, they had to make furniture just for women to faint on.

Women used to ingest arsenic to lighten their skin.

We purposefully treat our bodies, not like temples, but like canvases for our art. And our art is diverse. Porn stars to tribalists.

What does this say about those of us who still have a blank canvas. I currently have no tattoos. No piercings. No elective medical procedure except for braces in high school. And even that was in the guise of "dental health".

Where is our art? What does it say about an artist who ignores this god given canvas? Shouldn't we show our art in any shape we can? And when pen and paper is exhausted why not go to ink on flesh? Or even body removal for art?

If we let go of our gut reaction to be repulsed, where do we go? What would you do if life were like a William Gibson novel? Would you have fingertips with retractable blades? Would you have whiskers? Arms replaced purposefully with prosthetics that could do more? Or less? What would you make with your canvas?