BME: Body Modification Ezine

A black-and-white photo of a person mid-air in a Superman-style body suspension pose, supported by multiple hooks in their back and legs, smiling joyfully toward the camera. They are suspended horizontally in a large indoor space with high ceilings and visible rigging. A group of onlookers—some seated, some standing—watch with expressions of admiration, amusement, and support. The atmosphere is lively and communal, capturing a moment of shared experience and transformation.

Tattoo, Piercing, and Body Modification News, Events, and Culture

  • Tattooed Crooks

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    "The original Nazis tattooed their targets so they could always find them later. The new ones tattoo themselves. So we can find them.Hitler'd be ashamed of the morons."

    - Andrew Vachss, in Dead and Gone

    While I can see the temptation in breaking some laws, by golly, stupid criminals crack me up!

    Case (or five) in point: Arizona Republic just listed its Top 10 most wanted. Five — half — of them are tattooed. New York recently debuted its new high-tech command center, which will provide officers crucial data about crimes and suspects including convicts’ nicknames and tattoos even before police arrive at a crime scene (click here for an online demonstration), and Ottawa recently unveiled its new parolee database. From police reports to rap sheets, if you’re modified and you’re arrested, your modifications are going on record.

    Of course, the “winner” is Justin Breakspear of Massachusetts, whose tattoo reveals the serial number of his illegal gun.

    Gives all new meaning to “tattoo gun,” eh?

  • BME Newsfeed for Aug 7, 2005

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Please note that links may expire. IAM members, please help out by submitting stories!

  • Skin Tag Piercing

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    By Sonia at Westside Tattoo & Body Piercing in Brisbane, Australia.

  • Oslo SusCon

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Thanks to Allen of suspension.org for sending us some snapshots from this year’s WINGS OF DESIRE Oslo SusCon, going on right now. There’s actually a solid representation of American enthusiasts over there this year… I should have more for you soon (and of course lots on BME later)!

       

    Oh, and to those of you who have been asking for an RSS feed for this blog — I don’t have one yet because I still have to write the code that outputs it, but I’ll try and get that added some time over the next week as we finalize the way this thing is going to run.

  • The mouth hooks are a nice touch

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    These pictures (courtesy of IAM:vampy) are from a recent suspension event in London UK hosted by House of Wah, a new group lead by IAM:lefrog. If you’re interested, their next event is at the start of September and includes both private suspensions and a public show.

  • “alienated creatures who live on the fringes of society”

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Horror and science fiction motifs of course are not at all uncommon in the tattoo world, with the majority choosing imagery from modern “big name” films and those with mainstream cult status. Thus I was pleasantly surprised when my friend Midian2000 (who you may know as the organizer of the large So-Cal BME BBQs) chose an image from 1979′s ZOMBIE, perhaps the best living dead film of all time, by Lucio “Violence is Italian Art” Fulci.

    I’ve been a serious horror movie aficionado since I was about nine, with Polanski’s “Fearless Vampire Hunters” being the first film to really move me. All of the art I have tattooed on my body is extremely personal, whether it’s original art, like the pieces Clive Barker created for me, or whether it’s traditional, like my Choctaw pipehead piece. This time around, I felt that it was a moment in my life where I wanted to recognize what part horror, from films to books, has played in my life, and to honor that element of who I am. The image needed, in a single frame, to capture friction, stress, fear, horror, terror, threat, and madness. It needed to be iconographic … an image that embodied the catharsis derived from true horror.

    In Stephen Thrower’s amazing book Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci one frame of film popped out at me: the infamous splinter scene from Zombie. I had to have it. The original piece of art was a poorly reproduced, stark, black and white picture, but I knew there was potential in it. When I originally told Denny Besnard (Avalon II, San Diego CA) that I wanted it rendered in nothing but black and red, he strongly disagreed, saying he’d prefer to do it in a palate ranging from black to red, with everything from white to orange and yellow, in between. He thought he could bring this simple, still image to life through a narrow range of color — the results, I believe, speak for themselves.


    “If you blink, you miss so much…
    so don’t blink at all if you can help it.”

  • BME Newsfeed for Aug 5, 2005

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Please note that links may expire. IAM members, please help out by submitting stories!

  • Sphenoid Bone or Space Bat?

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    BME’s geek tattoo section is a perennial favorite of visitors who would otherwise not visit a tattoo website, and contains some of the most interesting pieces, among them this sphenoid bone tattoo on my friend Pip:

    She got it as a reward to herself after receiving her PhD; Pip writes:

    I am a bone geek with two human bone-related degrees. The sphenoid is a fantastic bone, shaped like a butterfly, moth, or alien space bat depending on how you look at it. It is one of those objects that proves that nature can just create the most amazing works of art. I fell in love with the form of the sphenoid when I first saw one and spent a lot of time sketching and doodling sphenoids when I was learning cranial anatomy.

    I liked the ambiguity of the shape, during my PhD studies I had come across a lot of art-historical theory about readers and super-readers, the gist being that depending on your level of knowledge, an image can carry different layers of meaning. This was particularly applicable to my chosen tattoo design: to the standard viewer, it would look like a gothic, gargoyle-esque butterfly; to the super-readers (i.e. bone geeks like me) it would be recognizable as a bone. It works too, I tested it out on a few osteology students at college and they recognised it instantly, whereas people at work need to be told what it really is! (Incidentally anatomists/doctors tend to be slightly confused, largely because they don’t understand what possesses someone to get a cranial bone tattooed on their back — or anywhere else for that matter).

    Got an interesting tattoo? Email a high-res photo to [email protected].

  • Like Diamanda Galas says…

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    It’s pretty common to hear “oops” stories about kanji tattoos — “I thought it meant ‘brave warrior’ but in fact it means ‘orange chicken!’” — but tattoo symbology is a rich subject, so I wanted to tell a story about my friend Mike.

    That’s him getting tattooed by Joi, and the resultant biohazard symbol tattoo. He got it right before the 2004 Rhode Island SusCon. At a suspension convention, controlling cross contamination is extremely important and far from easy. I’ll let Mike tell how people responded to his tattoo in his own words:

    I went back to my room and checked my e-mail. The friend to whom I’d sent pictures [of my tattoo to] had replied. His response was “Ummm…. Isn’t that usually for poz guys?” That was not the response I was looking for!

    [Earlier Ron Garza had also] wanted to know if I knew the significance of my new tattoo. I felt myself getting nervous. He told me that among gay men, it’s an indication that one is HIV positive. At first, I thought he was joking. It took me a few minutes to realize that he was serious.

    How the hell did all of these people know about the significance of my tattoo when I didn’t? I spent most of that weekend in a panic. Obviously, I was a little freaked out. The last thing I wanted was for people to think that I’m HIV positive when I’m not. As a gay man, that’s a pretty sensitive topic for me.

    Oops!

    He’d considered a cover-up, but Mike ended up deciding to keep the tattoo as a reminder to himself that he hadn’t done his homework, a mistake he never wanted to repeat. I should mention that Mike also has several gorgeous tattoos by Jon Clue, including a custom Dr. BME logo.

  • BME Newsfeed for Aug 4, 2005

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Please note that links may expire. IAM members, please help out by submitting stories!