Body modifications

This week's article is on one of my favorite topics. We've all seen these young rasta guys who suspend their bodies from hooks that have been put through body piercings - originally, the idea of suspension was to gain a higher level of spiritual fulfillment but nowadays mostly it's nothing but pure entertainment. Some women also introduce hooks into their back to emulate the appearance of the lacing on the back of a corset (corset piercing).
But body modifications are much more. Some people even try to do everything to look like their favorite animal. Keep reading and you'll find out.
This is not an article about body modifications for ritual reasons. This article is not about African tribes, giraffe women or Asian monks punishing themselves introducing knives into their cheeks.

Splitting and removal

In some countries of the world (obviously in the Netherlands), the splitting of certain body parts for aesthetic reasons is legal. The most common body modification is the splitting of the tongue. I think the bifid tongue, which allows very exciting movements, is a groovy thing. It's one of the first "mods" most of the extreme weirdos such as lizard man or leopard man get done.
Now I have to say that the result depends extremely on the owner of the tongue. The cute Asian girl in the video, who kindly shows us the splitting process she suffered, has definitively not lost her female attractive due to the surgery:




Tongue splitting is one thing. Even being a women, penis splitting seems just too hardcore for me. But, for unknown reason, there are always people willing to try that stuff (well, they only try once).
A lot of questions arise: how do they pee? Who do they eyaculate? I heard that some of these guys, after splitting their peter, put a piercing ring into each of the halves and a padlock to keep the penis shut during the day. What else could they do??
The genital bisection still allows for erection, though often the two halves curve into each other (I thought the purpose was to improve sexual activities, but I see it's not).
The photo shows the most extreme case, a complete splitting. But parcial "solutions" such as the meatotomy (splitting of the underside of the glans) are much more attractive, in my opinion.

There are people, some suffering from body integrity disorder (look for "amputee fetish" here) who have parts of their body removed. Fingers, penis, nipples or limbs can be victims of nullification. One of the weirdest examples are Ryan and Dave, twins from Phoenix, Arizona. Dave got his entire right arm amputated at the shoulder to have it surgically reattached behind his brother's right pectoral muscle. This is not a joke, you can read more here.


For some people it's not enough to modify their bodies; they want to modify their mind. Trepanation is a medical intervention in which a hole is cut into the human skull and left open permanently.
"Modified Mind" describes his experience:
This weekend I had a hole drilled through my skull. I read that this increased one’s consciousness permanently. I read about the supposed de-conditioning properties. I read about more parts of the brain working simultaneously as there would be more blood up there to help this happen. The arguments for it all seemed to be quite lengthy, quite detailed, thought out and researched, and very intelligent. The arguments against it were based solely on the opinion that it is ‘crazy’ and talk like, "What’s more conscious than conscious?". Read more

Eyes

Modifications of the eye? If you think of Chinese women having their eyes fixed to look more Western - maybe I'll write about that in a post about plastic surgery. Or people who have their whole body tattooed, including their eyelids. But what I have in mind is this:
Ever heard of "eyeball tattooing"? That's what's necessary to attain the electric blue eyes of the Arrakian spice melange addict (read the "Dune" trilogy by Frank Herbert) without having access to great amounts of the spice melange.
The problem is that you can't change the color to match it with your make-up or evening dress...

Eyeball jewelry is definitively the more elegant alternative. For 500 - 1000 € and in just 15 minutes the little platinum "jewels" are implanted in the conjunctiva.




Complete transformation

Some few people in the world decided to undergo a complete modification of their body to transform themselves into an animal or fantastic creature. They use all the tools that modern "science" can provide: extreme tattooing and piercing, subdermal implants to modify the body shape, tongue splitting, tooth filing, ear shaping etcetera, etcetera.
Famous example are Pauly unstoppable (photo on the left), who makes us discover the insides of a human nose. On his website, a full list of his body modifications is available.
67-years-old "Leopard man" lives away from modern society scampering around on all fours like a leopard.
Brazilian Elaine Davidson is the most pierced person in the world, she wears over 2500 piercings, 500(!) of them only around the genitals.
Kala Kawai (photo on the right) split his tongue using dental floss and did all his own piercings. Today he looks like an angry bull.

Probably the most famous case is "Stalking cat". Dennis Avner, native American, wanted to transform himself into his totem animal - the tiger: Tattoos, silicon implants on his face, filed teeth, pointed ears, attachable whiskers, claws and even a bifurcated top lip make him look like this (photo on the left).
Check out this website for the Top 10 of physically modified people.

This post would be way too long if I wrote about all the forms of modifying a body that I found on the Internet. But keep researching and post a comment sharing your conclusions with me.