Are you..."Modified"?

"Body Modification" is, in the first place, a problematic term.

It could range from 'acceptable' practices like orthodontic treatment and corrective surgery.

It could also include what people commonly know as "plastic surgery", where modification is done to enhance features, or achieve a look that is deemed attractive, or desirous to a larger part of the society.

My own interest in body modification has almost nothing to do with wanting to look more attractive to the larger general part of society, and more to do with individual self expression through deviance from what is deemed 'normal'. It has more to do with body art through commonly, tattoos, piercings including also derivatives from it like scarification, human branding, human suspension, subdermal implants but not strictly limited to these practices.  In most cases they are not medical procedures and are usually done for aesthetic purposes, and many of these 'painful' modifications are done without the use of anesthesia.

In the strictest sense it would be difficult to classify all who engage in such modifications as a cohesive subculture, because body modification exists in various "subcultures" (although this blog recognises that  the term subculture can be questioned as well) But what sets it apart and is a point of interest for me is its deviation from the society a particular modified person is, and what constitutes one to be considered 'modified'?

Of course one cannot discount that everything is highly subjective and arbitrary the extent as to what constitutes as a modification is also difficult to measure. For the sake of this blog, anyway, that a person may be considered 'modified' if he or she does something to change the appearance of their body which deviates from what the society/culture/body of people they exist in practice. The very act of, for example getting a tattoo in a society where it is not a common practice already is an intended deviance, whether or not the person consciously identifies with being part of a 'modified subculture' or a subculture that practices body modification.

A simple example- a female getting a nostril piercing in India would not be considered 'deviant' as it is practiced by generations of women and is common place and widely accepted in most parts of the country. The same cannot be said of a Chinese female getting her nose pierced as the particular piercing is not typical of the culture. Another example would be the male circumcision of non Islam or Jewish practitioners - the act of circumcision remains the same, but the intention behind it may be personal more than religious, and not connected to one's identity as a larger group collective.

So perhaps 'Modified' isnt the term to use, because how does one measure what constitutes being modified? Obvious examples are easily identified but would a simple piercing, or a small tattoo count?

What would be a more appropriate term would be a deviance from the majority in terms of body modification through 'body art' or 'decoration' - I find this more encompassing of individuals and various subcultures that would allow one to explore the breadth of what modification could possibly include, and to what extent it is practised.

Bennet's articles cites 'neo tribalism' as being "tied inherently to the origins of mass consumerism during the immediate post-Second World War period..." Which ultimately links with the idea that more often than not most people do not merely subscribe to a single form of social deviancy* anymore. Which is why this study on modifications prefers not to be limited to certain groups of people, rather using modification as a baseline to see how it manifests among various people. This goes along with the notion that "the sheer range of consumer choices now exist with the onset of a postmodern age and attendant postmodern sensibilities" People are just as able to 'consume culture' as they do with products, and this can be applied with people who are into body modification- they may engage in other subcultures where tattoos or piercings would not be a normality; for examples girls who are into Lolita fashion but have extensive tattoos or multiple piercings which somewhat does not fit in with the Lolita code of fashion- similarly not all people who identify as being a 'punk' get piercings and tattoos.

Furthermore, I also recognise body modification as an example of a 'magical solution'. Assuming that people get modifications as a marker of individuality, as a way of expressing that they are 'different' from the majority- it also makes the majority of society see them as different, and ultimately that is where body mod discrimination comes into the picture- it solves nothing  for the people who practice body modification as they still have to live within that society, and function according to those norms.  

*Note that my use of the term 'deviant' is a rather loose term and has less to do with the notion of deviancy/ delinquency than it has with more of wanting to be, or to do something different