Reasons for Piercing the Body

It should also be noted that while this paper is concerned with the practice of body piercing, parallels can be drawn between piercing and all other forms of permanent body art. Permanent body art marks the skin in ways which most would consider painful. Such experiences, while not producing identical effects, will produce related experiences and be inspired by a similar range of motivations.

In order to understand the motivations behind people's decisions to adopt body piercing it is important to have a cursory understanding of some of the views of other authors in whose works on related topics similar themes can been seen mirrored and analogies can be drawn.

James Myers, in his work on non-mainstream body modifications, divided the motivations behind 'severe' body art and manipulation into a number of distinct categories. The categories, listed as motivations and rationales, include sexual enhancement, pain, affiliation, aesthetics, trust or loyalty, religion or mysticism and shock value. His paper goes into great depth as to how each category influences people to get involved in such forms of body art. According to Myers an individual may indulge in body art for any combinations of these reasons, particularly, however, he emphasises the similarities between contemporary body modifications and traditional non-Western rites of passage (Myers 1992).

Thomas, in his work on Oceanic art, noted the important role tattooing played in Oceanic societies. Here tattooing was regarded as ".an important reinforcement of the body, a stage as vital as other moments in the life cycle, such as birth and death (Thomas 1995).

Gell goes further remarking that tattoos and 'mutilations' are used as signs to show involvement in the life cycle, they serve to show a body is lived in. He also points out that by using such permanent methods of self beautification the body itself can become regarded as a possession which is at once uniquely desirable and vulnerable (Gell 1993).

Sanders emphasises the ways in which body alterations are connected to status, social connections or concepts of beauty which span from generation to generation. She also recognises the dichotomy between the way a stigmatising condition, which all forms of body alteration can produce, causes affiliation juxtaposed with the effect to which extreme or extensive body modifications are often put, that is to try to disaffiliate oneself from society (Sanders 1988).