BME: Body Modification Ezine

A tattooed person suspends from hooks, laying flat, one leg higher than the other. Their head is back, and they seem to be smiling, dark hair dangling like an anime character.

Celebrating body modification culture since 1994.

Author: Shannon Larratt

  • The Matilda Piercing

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Rick, who describes himself as “an old and rusted piercer from Rome, Italia” (currently at The Ten Bells), wrote me with a photo of a unique piercing he did a while back and was wondering if it had a specific name. It’s basically a vertical lobe, but done with an unusual placement. The jewelry is a curved barbell, so the jewelry is barely even in the ear, and is almost more of a surface piercing on the neck that just happens to exit between the anti-tragus and tragus. He calls it the “Matilda Piercing”, and I’ve never heard another name for it, so that’s good enough for me!

  • Full Ear Reshaping by Samppa

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Samppa Von Cyborg (voncyb.org) just posted this remarkable ear reshaping. When Steve Haworth first pointed Katzen’s ear in the mid 1990s, the procedure was just a small snip and fold at the top of the ear, and by and large, the procedure hasn’t really changed a whole lot until recently, and Samppa is arguably at the forefront of showing that you don’t have to just point the top corner to one degree or another — you can actually reshape the entire contour and form of the ear from top to bottom. If I didn’t know and trust Samppa implicitly, I don’t think I’d even believe it was the same ear!

    While I’m mentioning Samppa, let me also post an update of the skull chest implant that I posted fresh a while back. The incision is still settling, but the implant itself is full healed and looks great. As far as I know more skulls are being added at the other points of the cross.

  • Pierced Whiskers

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Speaking of Eric Stango (of Lifestyles in Connecticut), I also wanted to show one more fun piercing project he’s done — this set of pierced whiskers, which is wonderfully appropriate on a woman named Cat. Seriously! He did them by first piercing the client with a set of 14ga labrets, and once those were healed and stable, he replaced them with a set of 14ga labret backings with long black teflon whiskers attached. Now what I want to know, is does this count as a mod that gives you a “sixth sense” in the same way that magnets do, if you use them like an animal does, walking through a dark and crowded room, using the whiskers as “feelers” to make sure your body doesn’t bump into anything? Either way, very cute and charming.

  • Anarchy Ear

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Last year Eric Stango of Lifestyles in Connecticut entered this over-the-top ear project in the Earmageddon contest. It didn’t win, but I think they should have given him some special Chaos Magick award or something. This seems like the sort of piercing that might grow on the ear of Tetsuo the Iron Man. The sort of thing that happens when one of Joeltrons “trondustrials” escapes from Arkham Asylum. My hat would be off to Eric and this piercing, but the piercing already stole my hat and ate it. I forgive it though, because it’s an awful lot of fun to watch.

    By the way I want to point out that what you see hanging out at the bottom, from the tragus and the lobe, aren’t just dangly bits — they’re actually attaching to a surface piercing on the sideburn, as you can see from the inset “before” picture. Click to zoom in for a better look.

  • Illusion — Two implants or three?

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    One type of implant I’ve always liked are the ones that mess with the person’s anatomy — Eaten Placenta’s ribcage bumps are a good example, as are these forearm implants (manufactured by Alejandro Hernandez) done on Johan Guardia by Juan Castro of Poder Sin Limites Body Mods (“Unlimited Power Body Mods”) in Alajuela, Costa Rica. Now, assuming my Spanish isn’t failing me, this is “doble joroba”, that is, two implants, not three, done using 12mm (1/2″) x 55mm (2″) Teflon half-domes. The third bump is the natural bump of Johan’s wrist, and I think Juan has done a great job cleanly aesthetically integrating this implant into Johan’s anatomy.

    But what I really love about this particular implant is that if Johan ever has to go to a hospital ER, it’s going to the make the doctors FREAK THE FUCK OUT as they imagine the horrible compound fracture in his arm. That said, I won’t be so amused if the doctors break his arm trying to fix what doesn’t need fixing!

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