Ban it all!

“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or to impede their efforts to obtain it.”

– John Stuart Mill

Over the past few months there’s been an upsurge in ludicrous “studies” — shallow covers for dubious statistics and ill-informed “medical” statements from doctors less concerned with truth and more concerned with using the letters after their name to put forward their personal prejudices — which decry various forms of body modification as dangerous and a threat to public welfare. As a result, legislators are being called upon to ban or restrict these activities in a misguided attempt to “protect” the public from itself.

First, let me just say this: FUCK OFF AND KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY.

Second, let me apologize for the profanity and follow up by saying this: You’re a bunch of hypocrites and bigots that are using shoddy science in an attempt to force your sociopolitical views on others and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

A recent study released by the European Union, and now being cited by media and lawmakers all over the world, makes perverse claims such as tattoo ink being made of car paint, states that up to fifty percent of piercings become seriously infected, and links a multitude of serious diseases and even several deaths to body modification.

As far as their claim of “tattoo ink being car paint”, it is true that many of the same dyes are used in tattoo ink as are used in car paint… but those same FDA approved dyes are used in food products, medical products, and so on — guess what — some cars have components made of stainless steel and titanium. Does that mean we should ban body piercing because “piercing jewelry is made of car parts?” The human body contains a significant amount of fecal matter at most times; because of that, I’d like to urge that Philippe Busquin, the EU commissioner responsible for this deceptive report, be flushed down the toilet for being a big walking turd.

The statement that “up to fifty percent of body piercings lead to acute infections which require medical treatment” is frankly preposterous and is, to put it politely, a lie. Millions of piercings are done every year. Millions. If Busquin’s claim was true, body piercing would be one of the largest medical emergencies humanity has ever faced. The truth of the matter is that body piercings rarely become acutely infected and medical treatment being required is extremely uncommon.

As far as linking diseases, primarily due to largely false stereotypical claims of unhygienic environments in tattoo and piercing studios, this is yet another fraudulent claim. The number of documented cases are rare, tend to be limited to unlicensed studios, and are becoming less and less common. I think it’s important to note that it was tattoo and piercing studios that, due to their strict adherence to contamination control, eventually forced dentists and estheticians to clean up their own acts. The Red Cross had major problems with their blood supplies due to irresponsible contamination control and as a result infected far more people with deadly diseases than the body modification industry ever has.

The claims of deaths are also deceitful — yes, there are a small number of deaths that are linked to body piercing, but what’s left out is that the piercing is rarely responsible for the death; it simply complicates existing medical sitations such as mitral valve relapse (and in all cases that I am aware of, these conditions were hidden from the piercer). I can think of only one or two cases where the piercings could be directly linked and in these cases the victim had behaved in a deeply irrational and irresponsible fashion (a la Lesley Hovvells) — after all, you can kill yourself with a hammer if you hit yourself over the head enough times… but that’s not how a hammer ought to be used.

I think maybe we need to do some comparison now. They tell us that of millions of people who get body modifications, vast numbers experience serious problems or even death — although given that the actual documented number of these “millions” is a handful at best, I’d love to know where they’re getting their information. In any case, let’s look at a few things that we know cause deaths:

Automobiles
Car crashes kill and maim an enormous number of people yearly, to say nothing of the environmental damage they are responsible for. At least 90% of all personal transportation (which accounts for almost all road fatalities) could be replaced by mass transit infrastructures which would be safer and cleaner than personal vehicles — tens of thousands of lives would be saved yearly, if not more. If the risks of body piercing are significant enough to justify new regulations and restrictions, then surely we should ban private ownership of automobiles.

Junk Food
Perhaps the leading cause of premature death in the West, the culture of obesity and sloth that our megacorporations have embraced is rarely questioned, even though it not only strains our healthcare systems, but the planet itself. In 2001 the Surgeon General announced that every year 300,000 people in the US die from obesity-related causes — and 60% or more of Americans are currently obese. The American Cancer Society cites similar statistics, saying that over half of cancer is obesity related…

If we can propose banning or restricting body modification for a few infections and some dubiously linked deaths, how can we stand by and allow (and encourage) young people to overindulge in a lethal drug that’s killing a million people every three years — to put this into perspective, obesity kills six times as many Americans every year as died in the entire Vietnam war. Ban junk food if you want to save lives.

Conversation
How many people have died because of the argument they got into with their neighbor? Or on a larger level, how many people have died because their country’s leader got in a meaningless argument with the leader of some other country? If we feel that the freedom of expression embodied in body modification is dangerous enough to restrict it, then it should be obvious that the far more dangerous freedom of speech should definitely be banned as well. Since the law is blind, we must ban free discourse of all kinds in order to protect the citizenry.

Marriage
How many people kill their spouses every year? How many cuckolds kill their spouse’s lover? How many kill themselves from the stress of a relationship? How many of their children do? Going by the cold numbers — especially now that we know that more than 50% of marriages end in divorce — it’s clear that marriage is a threat to society and human life that far outweighs the risks of body modification. If we are to act objectively, marriage and dating should be banned.

Religion

How many millions of people have been murdered in the name of one god or another? How many billions more have been repressed or abused for the same reason? Objectively, if body modification needs to be banned for being a danger, we’d best eliminate religion altogether. God may not be as dead as Nietzsche claimed, but in our objective legal society we surely must legislate his death.

Yeah, that’s right. The above is stupid and flawed thinking that any intelligent person should be appalled to stand behind… so we have to ask ourselves why intelligent people are doing this exact thing to a dramatically more ridiculous level when it comes to body modification?

They are doing it for one simple reason: bigotry.

They are launching preemptive strikes in a culture war.

The arguments that they present to defend their cases are deceptive and flimsy and never hold up under the light of any logical examinations. It’s very sad that we can proudly trumpet what free societies we all live in, yet when anyone steps outside the narrow definition of normal (as defined by “the man”), we twist words to try and justify denying them those freedoms. Freedom is a universal and borderless concept — we can’t stop someone from expressing themselves just because we think it’s “gross” (that’s really what this boils down to).

Papers are reprinting these claims constantly — please, if you see such an article in your local paper, don’t be afraid to write in and punch holes in their lies… It’s only because too few people are afraid to stand up for themselves that this is allowed to continue.

Good luck,

Shannon Larratt

BME.com

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The Benefits of Being Different

Well, if you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
‘Cause there’s a million things to be
You know that there are

– Cat Stevens

In his latest colum Erik, The Lizardman, suggested that it was laughable to seek out body modifications solely because they are rare or unusual, and even more foolhardy to get rid of a body modification when it becomes popular for fear of being perceived as part of the crowd. While I believe his core premise is accurate on a business level*, I’m not entirely sure that I agree with his decrying of difference for the sake of difference.

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* It is the “trend followers” who ultimately pay the bills of the body modification industry and thus keep it alive. Therefore it is wrong to downplay their value, since without them, we’d face significant hardships.

On an animal level, body modification serves to further two goals: first, strengthening the herd through a shared “belonger” visual language (African tribal scars, the Jewish bris, stretched lobes in the piercing scene, and so on), and second, as self-differentiating mating behavior (usually within certain boundaries, although we’re seeing those grow all the time). Until quite recently, all atypical modifications have been an individual expression — that’s where my interest lies, it’s what this article will focus on, and it’s what I believe we should protect and encourage.

To attract a mate of a specific type, animals differentiate themselves. Since females “choose” their mate in most species, males have evolved garish ways of drawing attention to themselves — look at birds and one of the first things you’ll notice is that the males are brightly colored and perform bizarre and dangerous rituals to attract attention, while the females have muted colors and tend not to put themselves at such risk. The basic idea though, universal across almost all animals, is that the unique and exceptional individual gets the best mates.

Humans of course are more complex animals, so our appearance and behavior is more than just mating behavior; it’s a broader form of communication. But it still boils down to the notion that the unique individuals define and rule the herd and the plain ones simply are going with the flow and get second pick. I should note that the definition of “plain” changes from year to year — at times it was normal to be corsetted, and nowadays it’s not abnormal to have a small number of tasteful body piercings.

Even a cursory overview of “successful people” (ie. business leaders, self-made millionaires, authors, celebrities, etc.) makes it clear that they’re not normal people. They tend to be tall. They tend to be beautiful. They tend to be eccentric. Of course there are exceptions, and it is true that the majority are excelling in socially acceptable ways, but the fact remains that the world and its destiny belongs to unique and exceptional individuals. That said, the brightly colored bird is more likely to be killed by a predator, and the same goes for humans. If your goal is survival rather than success, maybe you’d be better off flying under the radar and stick with the crowd.

The future is defined by change. When things stay the same they stagnate — and the sad truth is that most people prefer to avoid change out of fear. The person who embraces mods that are already “normal” is not taking humanity forward. They’re certainly helping by not holding it back, and, as Erik stated, they are helping build a foundation for further change, but they are not involved in defining the future. Maybe not everyone wants to do that (and some would argue that not everyone is qualified to do that), but anyone with decent self-esteem should want to be involved in this process. After all, if you believe you are a good person with valid ideas, should you not be taking part in deciding humanity’s future? We’ve seen that when the future becomes defined by the herd that it tends to fail until a small group of individuals stands up, tears it down, and rebuilds it with forward vision.

One of the points that Erik made — and a very valid one — was that no matter what, we are all individuals, and are all different. No matter what. Sure, that’s true, but on an objective level it’s not really so true after all. It’s kind of like the person who watches contests on TV and swears up and down that they’re smarter and could win the million dollars… that’s all good, and maybe it’s even true, but what does it matter if you’re not going out there and winning? We’re social animals — few of us, short of sociopathic serial killers, operate solely as individuals. As such, while it’s definitely good to perceive of yourself as an individual, you’d better be able to prove it if you want anyone to take the claim seriously.

Being different with the same form of expression is not really being different objectively; only subjectively. For example, if a person who’s lead a vanilla life gets a navel piercing, it can be a profound and positive statement on a personal level — one that I’d encourage (and I hope this isn’t coming across as negating that value) — but it is only a private statement. However, when you pursue modifications that are unique or relatively unique, you make a larger statement, and if you have some basic comprehension of esthetics, you can get “heavy mods” that are still attractive (read: successful) on a mainstream level and can even help you succeed in that mainstream — not because the mod “makes you better”, but because it’s an effective way to advertise and promote yourself. As I’ve mentioned before, it makes you memorable (unusual modifications do — a navel piercing did ten years ago, but that is no longer the case).

The term is thrown around a lot, but I believe that we’re sitting at the cusp of a major paradigm shift that will define human culture over the next millenia. We’re currently deciding whether we want to move toward a society that embraces the unique individual, or a conformist culture that insists on uniformity. Powerful forces and trends are fighting for each option, and as society stratifies the coming culture war becomes more apparent.

We have to ask ourselves which kind of culture we’d rather live in: are you defined as a member of a group (black, American, Russian, white, Christian, whatever) or are you defined as an individual, with your group allegiances being secondary? That is, are you defined by your similarities with your compatriots, or your differences? Logically, I fail to see how an individual can be defined by anything but the differences.

One of my favorite movies, Harold and Maude, contains a scene where they are walking through a flower greenhouse near a giant field of white daisies. Maude, an eccentric and full of life old woman says to her much younger boyfriend Harold, “I like to watch things grow. They grow, and bloom, and fade, and die, and change into something else! Ah, life!” She then tells Harold how she would like to be a sunflower, on account of them being “so tall and simple”, and then asks him what sort of flower he’d like to be.

Harold (an oddball who longs to be “normal”) gestures at the wide field of daisies, which from a distance look uniform in nature, and says to her, “I don’t know… one of these maybe. They’re all alike.”

Maude replies, “Oh, but they’re not! Look, see, some are smaller, some are fatter, some grow to the left, some grow to the right, some have even lost some petals… all kinds of observable differences! You see Harold; I feel that much of the world’s sorrow comes from people that are this, yet allow themselves to be treated as that,” pointing from the single flower to the giant field of daisies which then transitions into a field of thousands of white gravestones.

In conclusion, be yourself and don’t be afraid to tell people that as loudly as you want. Be proud of your differences; fight not just to protect them, but to amplify them! I named BME not just as an acronym for Body Modification Ezine, but as a symbolic statement of “BE ME“. IAM is of course the same. I aggressively encourage you to be yourself and back up that action with evidence of your uniqueness.

See the future. Be the future!

Shannon Larratt

BME.com

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PS. Let me be very clear though: if you want your navel pierced, that’s awesome and I think that on a personal level you can get a lot out of it and it’s absolutely worth doing and I encourage it as well. This column is not meant to spit on the mainstream; I’m simply trying to illustrate that the other side of the coin (“difference for difference’s sake”) has value as well. I also am not so blind as to believe that atypical body modification is the only way to achieve the goals I’ve discussed here — it’s simply the path I’ve chosen for myself (and I think it’s a good one; or at least the right one for me).

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Regulation: Attacks from Within?

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley,
An’ Lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain / For promis’d joy.”

– Robert Burns

Over the past six months I’ve been contacted by an increasing number of piercers and amateur activists complaining of perceived problems in the piercing industry, and seeking my help in pushing through regulations of various kinds to combat them. Most of these piercers are talented and experienced and often some of the best in the industry. While being very clear that I’m not attacking them, but simply their methods, what I’d like to show in this column is that while their actions are well-meaning, they are ultimately misguided and perhaps even destructive to the body modification community.

The first thing that should be addressed is that the piercing industry is only a very small part of the (atypical) body modification community. The piercing industry represents the commercial application of a very small subset of this community’s interests and because of it being a mass-market commercial application, there are certain incompatibilities, since one is built around the individual, and the other around larger issues such as public safety, contract law, and business ethics… all concepts which often run contrary to the extremist individual freedoms embraced by those drawn to atypical body modification, as well as the ever broadening freedoms being demanded by modern societies.

The big first question from my point of view is “why now?”

Why wasn’t the piercing community aggressively pushing for regulation five or ten years ago? At its simplest, the golden age of piercing is over. Five years ago shops regularly had “thousand dollar days” and there was more than enough business to go around. In 2003, competition is heavy, the market is saturated, and profit margins are lower and lower. Aging piercers are realizing that they’ve been putting long hours into what may be a dead-end job, and are asking themselves what the future holds — and how they can secure that future.

It’s expensive to run a good shop. Customers are rarely willing to pay more for high quality jewelry, and far too few are even willing to discriminate by the safety practices of the studio. As such, with pricing being equal, the better a studio is, the less money its owners and staff take home with them. It’s very easy for unscrupulous studios to legally undercut prices by reducing quality and seize a significant market share in exchange for cutting corners and providing substandard service — but let’s face it — that’s true in every industry, and it’s what makes capitalism work!

In response, a number of well-meaning good piercers are trying to push through regulation that would force every studio to conform to their tightly bordered and high-end standards. Much of the time this is accomplished by pointing out the many problems that arise from not maintaining those standards — slightly elevated (but still very manageable) rates of infection and complication, more young people with piercings (as if that’s a bad thing), and so on. This is further sought by publishing “scare articles”, citing their qualifications as required knowlege (nursing skills, CPR courses, and so on; all excellent knowledge to have as a piercer, but whether it’s required is very much up for debate), and generally using an approach of attacking others (often validly) to make themselves look better.

In light of recent attention by the mainstream media on procedures such as tongue splitting, others will make extremely negative statements about heavy mods and the artists that embrace them in an attempt to make themselves appear more responsible. I suppose they feel that painting others in the most dangerous, frightening, and irresponsible manner will make them appear more responsible to the mainstream in juxtaposition.

Problem is, that doesn’t work.

First of all, we need to realize that the majority of politicians (and media) are not involved in the body modification community and often don’t like piercing and see it with a preexisting set of prejudices. As such, they won’t see any juxtaposition of “high quality” versus problem studios — they will simply see the problems and, like all bigots, stereotype our entire community by the acts of the worst of the bunch.

Second of all, we need to acknowledge that there is no central professional organization of piercers for regulators to work with in drafting balanced legislation. While groups such as the APP have made excellent progress over the last decade, they still represent only a very tiny percentage of piercers. Almost all attempts to form such organizations have eventually degraded to infighting and apathy.

Because of those two factors, much of the political action on piercing is either pushed through by a individual piercers who don’t represent the industry on the whole, or, worse yet, by politicians working with doctors who don’t have any comprehension of or sympathy for atypical body modification. When this occurs we tend to see things much like gay sex laws — heterosexual sex is typically legal at 16, with homosexual sex not becoming legal until 18, and we see piercing being restricted to 18 even though cosmetic surgery is permitted at 16. In addition, we tend to end up with tightly defined rules which restrict jewelry use, procedures, and even aftercare to only one possibility. Since piercing is still very much evolving and improving, locking its growth like this is a potentially harmful act, and tends to restrict valid and sometimes even superior methods — as illustrated by some areas’ bans on dermal punches, scalpels, and other needle alternatives.

We also need to recognize that what an industry perceives as being right for it is not always right for the surrounding community (or from the industry’s point of view, the customer). The actions of groups like the RIAA are good examples of that of course, where we are watching a power shift from the music listener and the musician to the corporate distribution channels.

So what should we do? How can we ensure a high quality piercing industry that encourages the growth of the body modification community, gives consumers a range of options, while still ensuring basic safety?

Now, I’m not about to propose that this should be an absolutely unregulated industry; simply that we need to balance individual freedoms and public safety. Clearly we need to ensure minimum standards as far as sterility goes and making certain that regulation controlling contamination are adhered to — no studio has a right to willfully and negligently endanger its clients. I’m happy to say that a growing majority of jurisdictions have already enacted such laws covering piercing studios, nail salons, dentists offices, and so on. I am fully in support of such laws. They restrict no one’s freedoms and simply increase the safety level.

My focus with BME will continue to be education over regulation. This is why I dedicate resources to developing FAQ documents, BME/Risks, and work to get qualified authors writing columns. An educated consumer base will make the decisions that it sees fit for itself — and we do have the right to purchase low quality product should we choose to. After all, assuming base standards are in place, the worst that can occur from a lower-end studio under normal circumstances is a small scar. Given that we allow — and even encourage — the consumption of junk food and candy by even young children, thereby damning them to live in the most obese and unhealthy culture in human history (in effect allowing corporations to market a product that shaves 15 years or more off a person’s life), it seems somewhat hypocritical to suggest that we should restrict piercing to only the most conservative, limited, and safe options?

As far as age standards go — and we do need to strike a balance between the rights of parents, the rights of youths, protecting against predatory piercers, while making sure not to fall prey to ageism — we must create them in context with other age restrictions. It’s too easy to allow politicans to force into place high age restrictions as a shallow cover for an attempt to ban and keep piercings out of schools and so on. We allow youths to sign for surgery and drive at 16. We allow youths to sign for abortions without parental consent at as young as 14. We allow marriage and sex at 16 in most areas, and we even allow firearms to be owned by teens… If we are then to restrict piercing to 18, we need to justify how piercing is more dangerous than these acts and why comprehending them is out of the range of a young person’s ability. From my point of view piercing is a safe and excellent way for young people to practice independence and responsibility, and I worry that when we spend so much effort telling young people that they are immature that they will be utterly unprepared for the world when they reach adulthood.

I mentioned earlier that I believe informed consumers can make a good decision. Because of that, one type of regulation that I would like to see in place is disclosure laws. We require food manufacturers to place ingredients and nutritional information on the packaging in order to allow consumers to make an informed decision. We require auto manufacturers to disclose pollution and mileage data. Why should piercing studios not be required to state what material their jewelry is manufactured from? Without this information, the average consumer can’t tell if they are being sold a $1 mass-manufactured barbell made of cheap low-grade steel, or whether it’s a $20 piece of “implant grade” jewelery — while the vast majority of people can heal a piercing just fine with the cheap stuff, it will take a bit longer, the complication rate will be a fraction higher, and some people will have reactions. Certainly someone should have a right to choose that path, but I do not believe that a studio has the right to surreptitiously impose that path on unwitting customers.

Ultimately though there is only one way to guarantee a high quality industry: Consumers must, on their own, decide to support high quality studios. Poor quality studios don’t thrive in a vacuum — they thrive because of their large customer base. If you’re reading this, you probably have the knowledge required to judge which studios in your area are the good ones. Tell your friends. Write experiences about them. Tell the piercers why you go to their studio and not another, and tip them appropriately. People have a choice in life — all of our laws make it clear that we believe as a culture that people have a right to make bad decisions and purchase an ill-advised product should they choose to. Why should piercing be different? Are we really comfortable with ours being the one industry that’s tightly restricted and dictated by the whims of politicians?

To the piercers who are pushing for these laws, while I applaud what you are attempting to achieve (a high quality industry), I hope you consider that your actions may not achieve your goals, and could in fact have the opposite effect. There are better ways. Make sure that when you push for regulation and make public comment, you push for minimum standards and disclosure laws, and not for self-serving regulation that may come back to haunt us all, and that you respect the right of others to make their own informed decisions, even if you disagree.

Thank you,

Shannon Larratt

BME.com

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Is getting a BME tattoo lame?

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”

– E.E. Cummings

One of the things that BME preaches rather endlessly is a doctrine of individuality, self-expression, and self-determination, and when people ask my advice on tattoos I always urge them to get custom work and never copy someone else’s tattoo. Because of that, I am regularly asked what I think of people who choose to tattoo the BME logo on them. Short answer: Personally, I think it’s awesome, and very much in line with my general ideology on tattoos.

The tattoo section of BME also has a gallery of music related tattoos, largely images of band logos. While I suppose it’s very valid for a fan who feels that a band is an important part of their life to commemorate that with a tattoo, I don’t see that getting a BME tattoo is quite the same thing. A band is special because of the creative expression of the people in the band that is then enjoyed by the “fans”. BME on the other hand is special because of the creative expression of an entire subculture which is then appreciated by that subculture (and the mainstream world).

To put it another way, getting a tattoo of a band logo is an act of appreciation for the work of another person — saying “your music is important in my life” — whereas getting a BME logo tattoo is an act of appreciation for the work that we all did together. The vast majority of people who’ve chosen to mark themselves with the “BME4LIFE” message are regular contributors to BME, and can validly say that they helped create BME. More so than saying “I love Grobschnitt” or “Eloy Rules!”, a BME tattoo says, “I love myself. I’m proud of who I am, and I care about my family.”

Short of choosing the life of a sociopath, even the most individualistic people have family and community, not just by birth, but in modern times they also have the one they chose for themselves.

Most cultural groups develop iconography to identify and league themselves in a form that has meaning to them. Scottish tartans — the striped and checked patterns which represent different Scottish clans — date back nearly two millennia, and have evolved over time both to reflect both new manufacturing technologies and cultural and political changes such as clan intermarriage. With just a scrap of fabric from a person’s tartan it can be possible to identify where they are from, who they are related to, and in some cases even what they do for a living. Because of a ban on the tartan in the 18th century in an attempt to kill off the culture, coupled with modern commercialization, the direct significance of patterns is certainly up for debate, but the underlying drive is not. The heraldry of European families also illustrates similar motivations.

African scarification in different regions is well defined and carries a very specific set of iconography as well. While it’s dying out quickly, by the marks on a person’s body you can tell where they’re from, who their family are, and what point in their life they’re at. Maori facial tattooing serves a very similar purpose, signifying both individualism, allegiance to a certain tribal group, and as a marking of social status — with the lowest people not being tattooed at all (as they effectively had no identity).

The notion that body modification is an important part of defining one’s identity is far from unique — I’d go so far as to say it’s nearly universal. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote in the 5th century BC of the Thracians (who lived in what is now Turkey and Bulgaria), “to have punctures on their skin is with them a mark of nobility; to be without these is a testimony of mean descent.” Nearly every culture has at one point in their history used permanent markings to signify both individual identity and group identity.

It’s also not an expired idea in any way — gang tattoos, fraternity brands, and BME tattoos are all permanent body marks that involve both an act of individualism and an integration into a specific tribe by embracing and personalizing its shared symbols. When a person marks themselves with any of these they’re not simply making an esthetic statement, nor are they bowing down before an idol. They are glorifying themselves and what they stand for and what they work toward in life.

So to return to the question of why a person who encourages individualism and discourages copying others ideas as one’s own would support tattooing a “website’s logo”, I say that a BME tattoo, assuming that it is in the context I’ve described here (and I really believe it almost always is), does in fact achieve those goals. It’s not just a tattoo of a pretty picture; it’s a tattoo of an idea.

If BME has played the catalyst in bringing about someone’s emancipation from the shackles of conformity and somehow helped them “be themselves”, then I can’t imagine how signifying that with a shared symbol of the people who collectively fight for that is anything but wonderful, beautiful, and meaningful.

Shannon Larratt

BME.com

PS. If you want a BME tattoo yourself, first and foremost remember that it’s your tattoo and your symbol. Don’t be afraid to alter it and fine-tune it (or not) to reflect your own feelings and interests and thoughts. Don’t be afraid to integrate it into other pieces (one of my favorite BME tattoos is one where a BME head was put on the end of a staff in a larger tattoo) and always remember: you built this site… It’s not just a trademark of a website — it’s an icon of a subculture with a set of shared values and beliefs and activities.

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Piercing guns are blasphemy! “The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson “One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” – Elbert Hubbard Those of you who have been reading BME for a long time probably remember our “No Piercing Guns” t-shirt published about five years ago, which we discontinued after lawsuits were threatened and launched against us and others with similar warnings. The gun manufacturers’ objection was with the list of reasons printed on the back, centered around the sterility issues as well as some of the design flaws that made the guns unsuitable for body piercing in general.

This shirt addressed the core problems with classic-style piercing guns (essentially a spring-loaded device that propelled a piercing stud through flesh and was then reused on every client with minimal contamination control; rarely any more than an alcohol wipe), starting with the sterility issue. Because the guns were designed to be reused and their plastic bodies precluded the ability to autoclave them, bloodborne pathogens could easily be transmitted between clients — there are numerous known and well-documented cases of hepatitis being spread by these guns.

The shirt also addressed the issue that the stud was relatively dull (far duller than a piercing needle) and was basically just rammed through the tissue with force. Now, on earlobes you can probably get away with this and not affect healing dramatically, but on other parts of the body significant damage could occur. Most notably in upper ear cartilage, these studs have been documented as being able to actually shatter the tissue, leading to collapse of the ear altogether and other serious problems. The “one-size-fits-all” nature of the studs (short; designed for a close fit around an earlobe) compounded this problem and by compressing the tissue could lead to increased swelling and irritation, which often would eventually lead to infection and/or rejection.

Finally, the design of the guns in general was not really conducive to accurate placement. While they could “hit their marks” on lobes most of the time, their design made it difficult to accurately place the jewelry in any other part of the body — although I should point out that most reputable piercing gun manufacturers do emphasize that their guns are only to be used on earlobes and even go so far as to cancel the contracts of businesses that abuse their guns.

While I’m mentioning “reputable” piercing gun manufacturers (it makes me sick to say that) I’ll also point out that a number have redesigned their guns to use disposable cartridges which go a long way to making them “single use”, thus dramatically reducing the chances of passing contamination from client to client. In a perfect world one might be able to make the argument that this design of gun is perfectly appropriate for use on earlobes.

However…

It’s not a perfect world.

One has to take the human factor into account — this doesn’t solve the problem. It simply shifts the blame.

A body piercer is expected to have at least a year of apprenticeship before they’re considered “trained”. Not because piercing — the act of piercing itself — is in and of itself difficult, but because there’s an enormous amount of peripheral knowledge that must be learned and practiced in order to keep the client safe. It’s not unusual for a piercing gun technician to receive just an hour’s training in the food court of some mall… Do you really think that’s enough time to adequately explain and train the finer points of universal precautions?

You see, even if the disposable cartridge type of piercing gun goes a long way to addressing the obvious contamination issues, if the surrounding area (the gun body, the outside of the cases, the storage bins, the hands of the technician, whatever) becomes contaminated, it’s all for naught. The same of course goes for piercing studios, nail salons, barber shops, and any other business that comes in contact with blood; its safety really is judged by the lowest common denominator.

In addition to poorly trained staff potentially negating any benefits to the redesigned guns, the issues that make the gun unsuitable for anything other than at best earlobes have not been addressed and likely can not be addressed. And that — the fact that the gun will never be anything other than a tool for punching holes in earlobes — is the main reason that BME doesn’t support the piercing gun and doesn’t publish stories built around it.

But BME does publish things like self-piercing stories, often highly irresponsible and misguided. So why not publish stories using a gun? Doesn’t the end justify the means, at least a little? I don’t think so; in my opinion piercing guns are a dead end. Piercing guns have nothing to do with body modification. They’re a mistake.

Look at it this way; if you wanted to become an astronaut, would you teach yourself to drive a motorboat, or would you teach yourself to fly an airplane? Both are methods of transportation, and really, it’s a lot cheaper and a lot more accessible to learn to be the skipper of a little fishing boat… But it’s not a path that leads you toward the heavens — just as piercing guns will not lead you to body modification.

There is no direct bridge between the piercing gun industry and the body modification community. Sure, you can “move up” from the gun, but it represents not a step up from where you are, but instead a rejection of where you are and the embarkation on an entirely new path with sounder philosophies and methodologies. What that means is that by contributing financially and socially to the piercing gun industry, you are helping solidify a false path (and again, that ignores the fundamental health factors that on their own should be enough to convince any lucid individual to stay away from these devices).

If BME were to pledge support to the piercing gun industry it would be spitting in the face of the piercing and body modification communities by propping up a business that in my opinion not only endangers its customers but misleads them about their potential future. After all, the easiest way to keep a person from achieving enlightenment is by sending them on a holy quest that is anything but holy — nearly every religion warns in its own way of the danger of false idols and dead end paths.

I realize that I’m largely preaching to the choir here, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t have friends and relatives who end up in the sights of the well-funded and well-advertised piercing gun machine… Remember, “friends don’t let friends get gunned”. Unless you’re looking for a dead end path that’ll put your life in needless danger (and, if body modification is a spiritual act, perhaps even put your soul in peril), seek out a professional that can do a good job making all your dreams come true… not some hack that at best can do a shoddy job of making one dream come true, with no hope for the rest.

Needles, dermal punches, and scalpels make my day.
Use them well,

Shannon Larratt

BMEzine.com

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