Body Modification

Interest in body modification has grown significantly over the past 40 years in the Western world. Body modification encompasses a wide array of bodily practices, including but not limited to tattooing, piercing, cutting, scarification, branding, subdermal implantation, stretching, binding, suspension or flesh hanging, and human-machine hybridization. The term has also been used to refer to practices such as surgical alteration (often those deemed “elective” or “cosmetic”), bodybuilding or sculpting (through the use of performance-enhancing substances, diets, and exercise regimes), and anorexia or fasting. Typically, body modification techniques inscribe and alter the body's surface; however, the latter two examples illustrate how, through the loss or gain of body mass, the body's exterior might be transformed from the inside out.

Deviance scholars are drawn to the topic for a variety of reasons. Most research explores body modification as a form of physical deviance, focusing on the violation of traditional corporal appearance, adornment, and maintenance norms. Research also examines how specific forms of body modification are adopted by and utilized within various subcultural groups. This work elucidates the impact that such practices have on the identities of individual subculturalists as well as the shared systems of meaning that subculturalists create around these varying practices. Additional research reveals how the mainstream media frame certain body modification techniques as healthy modes of beautification and others as harmful forms of self-mutilation. [Page 72]Finally, body modification has been studied as an expression of oppositional political and cultural beliefs and as transgressive erotic performance.

Whether deemed “extreme” (e.g., surgical genital modification), “mainstream” (e.g., ear lobe piercing), “personal,” or “political,” the key theme that unites each of these diverse practices is the intentional physical transformation of the flesh. This entry provides an overview of nontattoo forms of body modification. Specifically, it discusses various techniques of body modification, recent historical shifts in somatic conceptualizations, body modification as subcultural practice, and media representations of body modification and body modifiers.