Nathalie has given a very good tip on what kind of career to train for so we can be poised to take advantage of the need for reconstructive surgery. Am not playing this for laughs. Anyone with income or talent could train for a residency in plastic surgery, an assistancy, or at the very least, if they have investable funds, look for companies and gadgets used by practitioners in this area of surgery.

In my neighborhood, so many people have tattoos and piercings that they no longer seem worth looking it. To me, body art has become routine, rather than worth looking at, because now, Everyone Is Doing It.

If someone shows up who is unmarked and only has the holes they were born with–that, friends, has become unusual.

Note: acne rosacea (different from teenaged acne) may be prevented if one eats plenty of omega-3 fats (fish oil works best, as some persons dont have enough delta-6-desaturase enzyme needed to digest flaxseed omega-3s), green vegetables, avoids hydrogenated fat. Applying a paste of neutral oil and high quality turmeric powder can make the acne rosacea flare spots go away.

If I only had known this ten years ago, I would not have needed laser treatments.

Final note: My dentist, who teaches at the local dental school, said people have come in with cracked teeth because they got heavy steel tongue piercings
and whacked a nearby tooth, cracking it.

And you’d better not have any of that stuff in you if you get in an emergency, need an MRI and the medical folks dont know where your gadgetry is.

One law enforcement fellow said he and his pals in the sheriffs department had a very ghastly evening when they had to arrest and book a bunch of crusty punks who had stupidly gotten into a brawl at a club one night.

Removing the earrings and various piercings was fun, fun funnnnn.

Fashion is strange. In the 1970s, no one I knew considered it necessary to get body art.

And thirty years ago, remember the old yoga shows on TV?

People wore generic leotards and that was it. No one carried a sticky mat or endless cutsie accessories.

A fashion victim is a fashion victim, only in most cases you are not marked for life if you find you are bored.

Ten years ago (1999) I had some disfiguring blood vessels, tiny ones, that had developed on my face, due to a skin condition, acne rosacea.

This was minor, minor..compared with the large sized tattoos some persons get.

The laser treatments to remove those small blood vessals cost me $500. It took 2 to 3 months for the black and blue marks produced by the laser to fade.

Anyone who wants to decorate their body and not have to pay a fortune for tattoo removal is best advised to do henna body art. Henna lasts a couple of weeks but is not permanent.

Another note: I met a man who had once been a hard core heroin addict and who later, after much suffering, hit bottom and went through recovery.

During his junkie years, when he felt proud of being a junkie, he had a big syringe tattooed on his forearm.

He was now very sorry he did it because every time he looked at that image, it reminded him of the craving. And it scared away the kind of people he now wanted to be friends with. But he could not yet afford to have it removed.

In my neighborhood, some of the homeless street people have tattoos all over their faces. They are literally marked for life. No reponsible body artist will modify someones face, due to the unforseen social consequences. Anyone who is renegade enough to mark a persons face is probably not all that reliable in keeping the tattoo needles and ink clean.

That being said, I think that outside of the standard clinical definitions for known psychiatric disorders, determining what is “self-mutilation” is very subjective. What I perceive as people mutilating themselves, others may not. Regardless, I still reserve the right to think that it’s foolhardy.

And given the horror stories from the ski hill, it’s clear there are far too many people who DON’T think about the risk/impact of body mods even in the short term – instead trying to be trendy and cool – and getting pretty seriously ripped up by their jewelry when they wipe out.

I stand by my supposition that there’s going to be a significant segment of people 20-30 years from now, who went for the plugs, “stretching” and other mods to be “in” or cool, or rebel against their parents (or whatever), that will regret the decision after they experience the impact of aging on those mods.

…And the plastic surgeons will be there to capitalize on the folly of youth. Earlobe tucks, anyone?

Some people see the difference as trying to conform to a social (real or imagined) ideal or trying to deviate from it. In general society a woman with inflated lips, silicone breasts, a botoxed forehead and a nipped and tucked neck is going to receive much less negative attention then a someone who just stretched out their earlobes a little.

You could be right that getting more and more modifications to ones body could be unhealthy mentally… then again it’s just a harmless change in society. There was a time when there was much less freedom in what was considered acceptable clothing worn in public, now there is less social restrictions on body changes.

I still think you are lumping too many things together. Total outsider body mod enthusiasts are as different from odd earrings and tattoos to show off in your club gear as wearing a weird tie to the office is from showing up to the board meeting in a bathrobe.

That being said, can we truly consider going in for more and more body modification (whether it’s plastic surgery or “body art”), truly mentally healthy? Why is it that women who have excessive amounts of plastic surgery are said to have a “disorder” (body dismorphic disorder), while people who put implants under their skin and massive plugs through their ears, and cover themselves in tattoos are somehow exempt from that kind of classification?

And on a side, note, I DO consider it mutilation when parents get their infant or young daughter’s ears pierced. I saw one woman at shopping mall with a screaming 3-year-trying to convince a girl at a shop to “just pierce the kid’s ears”. (I also think that circumcising male infants is mutilation too).