Shannon Larrat, BME, and a Hesitant Reversion

I feel like I owe Shannon Larrat and BMEzine a fair bit of respect and admiration in terms of being a driving force for how I have lived my life the last 5+ years. I found this video on Shannon’s blog today, a preview from a forthcoming documentary about body modification, called ‘Open Eyes, which looks like it will be very good. I thought I’d share it here, maybe enlighten one or two more people, or at least awaken some newfound curiosity..

With BME in a bit of a mess at the moment, I would recommend Shannon’s blog as a temporary spot to find new information on the mod subculture.

I have to say by the way, that I really miss my visible mods. 6 months back I had 30 cm lobes, and before that I had big nostril, labret, and various other piercings. I look back on pictures of that, and realize looking that way made me very happy. Removing the majority of my visible piercings was really a preemptive tactile move. Because I want to work in health care, I figured I would decrease my chances of discrimination if I removed my lobe and facial piercings. Rest assured, most of my family and acquaintances have given their sighs of relief that I now look ‘normal’ – but isn’t it funny that what seems normal to me, even now, would be to have big piercings? I realize the paradox – you could argue that ultimately looking normal would entail looking how you were to look if you were naked, without any cosmetic changes. One could similarly argue that a normal look is the standard set by society, i.e. a kid with a benign tumour on his face will get reconstructive surgery to look normal. This definition may the most true to the dictionary one of normality, but to me, normality would be to look how I feel I should look. Normality would be to allow myself to look how I want to look. If you take one thing from this blog entry take this – The concept of ‘Normal’ is a completely and utterly subjective one. If it is applied to people, it depends on the individual, it depends on the cultural background that person is from, and it is not for you to say that they are not normal.

My right ear prior to ‘fixing’, and without jewellery in.

My right ear immediately after ‘fixing’.

A lot of people get really preachy when it comes to body mod culture. Even people very close to me have thought I was using body modificaton (not only cosmetic changes, but ritualistic things like body suspension, play piercing, etc) as a beard. Hiding something. That it was maybe symptomatic of deep disturbances within me. I could be wrong, but the way I know myself, this is completely without any basis in reality. I appreciate that certain people perhaps do this or that for the attention it brings, and I appreciate that certain individual episodes of my life have perhaps been done to bring attention to myself (I say this as a viable possibility, I don’t actually see it that way). But to stereotype all body mod associated activity as this phenomenon is a bit like saying every time someone drinks, they will drink-drive to get home. Far out example, but what I mean is – it boils down to individual episodes of life. Sometimes people do thing A to achieve B, but other times, they do A to achieve C, D, or E. Or F. A friend of mine once spoke of another friend of mine, a performance artist and fakir, as someone who was ‘pretty attention seeking’. By proxy she not only insulted my fakir friend, but also me, since what she implied was that the only reason people would share their mod related rites or rituals was to gain attention (for my fakir friend, it even pays the bills!). Again, I feel it’s very important to remember that people haven’t always got the same mindset as yourself. It’s so easy to judge someone because you don’t personally agree. I do it too, just so we’re clear on that. But unless that person’s activity harms another soul, I try my best not to, and so should you.

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If I for some reason abandon my dream of becoming doctor, I will strive to have more surgery, to put me ‘back to normal’. In the meantime, the dream of helping others and working in surgery is a more important one.

- Alex

P.S. Here’s a link to the best blonde joke ever. Haha, I must admit it took me like a minute to get it!