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

  • Ryan Ouellette: Lord of the Blade [Guest Column]

    Written by

    BME

      

    Ryan Ouellette

    Lord of the Blade


    “I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want — an adorable pancreas?”

    - Jean Kerr

    There’s something quite profound about scarification that marks it apart from other forms of aesthetic body modification. Whereas tattoos and piercings augment and decorate the body by adding ink or metal, a scar is created merely by interacting with what’s already there, harnessing one of the peculiarities of the skin and channelling it to decorative ends. By using a scalpel, branding iron or cautery pen, it is possible to create intricate patterns in the skin, which, when healed, form distinctive and permanent scars. I really see this as body modification in its purest form — the body itself is producing the artwork, sealing over the inflicted wound and leaving an enduring mark that is actually part of the skin, not an inorganic addition.

    Unfortunately, the idiosyncratic nature of an individual’s healing often makes the results of scarification fairly unpredictable, and as such the designs attempted have usually been fairly simplistic. In the West, scarification has tended to be either pieces made up of single line scalpel incisions for fine work or large, heavier scars produced by branding. Over the last few years, however, a number of scarification artists across the globe, feeling artistically constrained by the limited results and narrow range of designs that can be produced by single-line cuttings and the unpredictable and brutal scars left by brands, have begun to experiment with skin removal techniques, using their tools to actually remove areas of the upper layers for skin to produce larger, bolder and more predictable results.

    Fresh skin removal scarification Healed skin removal scarification
    Fresh and healed skin removal by Ryan Ouellette

    Skin-removal really is in its infancy, and this article is in no way intended to be a how-to or instruction manual on the intricacies of this invasive and potentially dangerous procedure. Please do not try this at home. Instead, I hope it will illustrate what it is possible to do with the human body’s largest organ and germinate a few ideas in your head. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to interview one of this community’s most prominent, prolific and talented scarifiers, and this article is in many ways both a portrait of him and an introduction to his often astonishing work.

    Although not the ‘inventor’ of this technique by any means, Ryan Oullette (IAM:The Fog), a twenty-five year old artist working out of Precision Body Arts in Nashua, New Hampshire, is widely regarded by his peers as one of the best scarification artists currently practising skin removal. Photos of his scars were recently showcased in National Geographic magazine, the patterns and motifs he produces are brave and original, and his work — both fresh and healed — is simply stunning. Chatting with other scarification artists, Ryan’s name comes up again and again when they’re asked whose work they particularly admire.

    Ryan Ouellette Ryan Ouellette at work
    BME:  Where are you from originally, Ryan?
    RYAN:  I grew up in a small rural town called Pepperell — it’s just over the border in Massachusetts only about a half hour from the little city I live and work in now, Nashua. BME:  What got you interested in body-modification in the first place?

    RYAN:  I have no idea to be honest. It was never a choice, it just felt natural. Like shaving or eating. I ‘play-pierced’ myself a lot when I was younger, with sewing needles and things like that. I used to do crude scarification on myself with needle heads in my bedroom. I never thought it was unusual behaviour and I didn’t see it as ‘self harm’ or anything. It just felt natural. I started getting actual piercings in my mid teens and it just grew from there.

    BME:  How long have you been ‘in the business’ as a piercer and practitioner?

    RYAN:  I’ve been piercing professionally for about five years. I had hopped around part-time at some shops for another year or so before then but I would say that was more of an amateur thing. I took over my shop about four years ago and I started cutting maybe six months after that.

    BME:  Did you apprentice?

    RYAN:  I’m completely self-taught as far as technique goes, although I’ve done a lot of formal training for piercing (Association of Professional Piercers anatomy classes, aseptic technique, and so on). I got some little pointers here and there from talking to guys like Lukas Zpira over the internet. I try to soak up all the ideas I can from watching videos and looking at pictures of other artists’ work. But mostly it was just trial and error.

    One of the bigger things that sticks out in my head is reading an interview about Blair and his branding. He talked about how a lot of branders were scared to hit the same line multiple times and he said something along the lines of “work it until you’re satisfied”. And that really influenced my cutting style. Instead of trying to get a perfect line in one pass I hit and re-hit the same multiple times until I got it looking exactly how I wanted it. My cuttings are actually influenced most by Blair’s brandings if that makes any sense.

    BME:  When did you start doing cuttings, and how did you develop?

    RYAN:  Aside from the little chicken scratches I did as a teen I started professional cutting about three-and-a-half years ago, early 2001 I think. Originally I only bought scalpels to do work on myself. I never intended to work on other people at first. I did some small pieces on myself over the course of a few months. After that I did one on a guy I worked with, then my girlfriend. Gradually, it grew to regular customers, and once word got out on the internet I started to get a lot more people coming in asking about it.

    BME:  Do you perform other forms of scarification such as branding or electrocautery?

    RYAN:  I only do cutting. I’ve never even attempted any form of branding. At first I looked at scarification as the name for any scar procedure and I looked at things like scalpels, cautery pens, hyfrecators, and so on as different brushes used for one kind of art. Now that I’m experienced with a scalpel I see cutting and branding as two completely separate art forms. I might get into branding in the future but right now I feel most comfortable with a blade.

    BME:  Why and when would you choose skin removal as a method of scarification as opposed to simple scalpel cutting or any other methods?

    RYAN:  It all depends on the design. My earlier work was basic geometric designs — lines and curves. No solid or bold sections. After a while, I got bored and I felt that in order for my designs to evolve I needed to have larger sections, so that’s when I tried out flesh removal. My first one came out terribly. I cut it the way I would a single line piece and it ended up being way too deep and it healed really unevenly and didn’t look good at all. I gave up on flesh removal for about a year and then decided to try it out again, this time on myself. I changed what I thought was wrong with my last one and the piece came out to my satisfaction. After that it just felt as comfortable as anything else, so I incorporate it into most of my designs these days.

    BME:  How do the results differ, in your view?

    RYAN:  I just like the bold sections more than single line work. There is only so much you can do with single line pieces. After doing single line pieces for a year or two I was getting a lot of requests for designs that just couldn’t be done without flesh removal. Also, it’s easier to get a nice distinctly healed scar with flesh removal. I seem to get more consistency with them. I try to push myself each time. I think I do my best work when it’s something that looks too complicated for me.

    Skin removal scarification by Ryan Ouellette Skin removal scarification by Ryan Ouellette Skin removal scarification by Ryan Ouellette
    BME:  Can you talk me through the procedure, from start to finish?
    RYAN:  Well it’s actually pretty similar to a tattoo for set up. The skin is shaved when needed, cleaned (sometimes with iodine, sometimes with Technicare), and then I put on a stencil. After all the prep stuff I usually make a quick pass over the entire design with a #11 blade scalpel. I basically consider it guide-lining. It’s not very deep, and it looks pretty uneven at first. It’s basically just opening up the skin over the whole piece very shallowly; the depth isn’t evened out until the next step.

        Number 11 scalpel blade
    11
    		 Number 15 scalpel blade
    15

    Next I’ll usually change blades to keep it sharp, and then I’ll go back over the design and slowly even out the depth and width. The depth and width varies depending on the design. If it’s single line I tend to go a bit deeper and wider. If I was doing removal I would go a bit shallower because I’ve learned that if you do flesh removal too deep it tends to blob out and heal unevenly. For removal sections I get my outlining done and then I use some haemostats to basically just pull up a corner. Then I use a #15 blade and slowly separate the tissue up and away while I lift with the clamps. I try to go as even as possible because you obviously want a uniform removed section for good healing. I try to make my removed sections as small as possible because I’ve noticed that if you try to remove too large of an area the center of it tends to be excessively deep. I’ll often split a removed area into smaller sections or strips and remove them individually instead of just on one large hunk.

    As far as the depth goes I’ve talked to a lot of very good scarification artists and their techniques all vary. Depth is really just whatever works for the individual. Generally you’re going into the tissue below the cutaneous layer but not through the fascia. And I’d say that good flesh removal is typically slightly shallower than single line scarification. You really want to keep it uniform. You don’t want to see pits and valleys because that means different tissue layers, hence different scar production.

    Ryan Ouellette at work

    In terms of blood control, basically I just pat my field with paper towels as I work, again similar to tattooing. I really like to keep my lines clean and as dry as possible. Some people bleed more than others, obviously, so sometimes it’s hard to keep things as clean as I like but I generally don’t like blood to leave my immediate field. I don’t just let it drip all over the place like some people tend to do. It’s partially for contamination control but it’s mostly just so I can clearly see the cut depth and width clearly. The bleeding tends to stop within five minutes of finishing a line. So by the time I move on to a new line my previous ones are usually dry.

    I’ll occasionally clean the field during the procedure, typically between steps. So maybe once after all the outlining is done, and then again when the piece is completed. I typically clean the field with green soap solution, again like a tattoo. After I’m done I’ll bandage the area with a sterile non-stick dressing. I usually tell the person to keep it bandaged for at least four to six hours. Sometimes, particularly for flesh removal, I’ll just have them keep it bandaged overnight. As for removed skin it’s basically nothing by the time I’m cleaning everything up post-cutting. Without blood supply it shrivels up within just a few minutes.
    BME:  What are the benefits of skin removal — what can be done, and what are the limitations — what can’t be done?
    RYAN:  I think the main benefit with flesh removal is additional control. With a single line cut you make a cut and basically just widen it out and change the depth. So if you make a slight error all the cuts from that point on are going to have to work around that one mistake or even it out. With flesh removal you can control both the outline and center of all lines and sections. If I want to do a grouping of small tight lines, especially with angles or curves I’ll almost always do it with removal. If you do single line you are basically splitting the skin open so that can sometimes limit what you can do right next to a line. With flesh removal you are going shallower so the skin tends to open less. So I can do tightly compacted lines and feel confident that they’ll heal where I put them. If I tried to do lots of small lines within an eighth of an inch they would tend to scar outward and probably blend together during the healing process. The lines are more straight down and tend to heal in their original location unless they keloid a significant amount.

    As far as what can’t be done I guess I would push people away from very large sections of removal. If someone wanted a removed section bigger than maybe two inches wide I would probably try to change their design or flat out turn them down. As far as complexity I’ve never had to turn something down because it’s too complex. I’ve had to rework designs to simplify them slightly in order to be able to cut it into someone. Obviously you can’t do shading, so I have to redraw things to make them bolder, kind of like a solid black tattoo.

    There are some areas I would prefer to not work on like hands, wrists, necks, and so on. But I’m sure if someone really wanted a piece there I could figure out a way to do it safely. I’d just have to do it a little shallower than average. I did some flesh removal stars on the side of my girlfriend’s hand and it was very difficult. Two little coin-sized sections took me about two hours because I had to be so careful with my depth and remove the tissue at the exact same shallow level.

    Skin removal scarification by iam:The Fog Skin removal scarification by iam:The Fog
    BME:  What are the risks?
    RYAN:  Risks are similar to any comparable procedure like tattooing or branding. The biggest risk would be infection but I’ve never had a problem with that. I give very clear aftercare instructions so it hasn’t been an issue. That’s the only thing I would call a risk. There are more complications that could come up like uneven healing and scarring mostly. Occasionally a person can get kind of a rash around the piece, depending on aftercare. It’s usually from wrapping it the wrong way or not cleaning it often enough.
    BME:  What aftercare do you generally recommend?
    RYAN:  My basic aftercare is that they keep it covered with plastic wrap and Vaseline for about seven to ten days. It keeps the body from forming a scab which makes it heal more from the bottom up instead of from the sides inward. It’s just important with wrapping that you keep the piece clean and somewhat dry. So I tell the person to unwrap and clean it throughout the day. I usually just have them use an antimicrobial soap like Satin or Provon. If they don’t clean it often enough the fluid under the wrap can cause irritation or a rash. The rashes are more frequent if I have to shave the person before the cutting.

    I basically just worked out my aftercare with trial and error. I also talk to a lot of other artists about technique so I steal a lot of ideas from them. Sometimes I’ll suggest using a mild irritant like lemon juice mixed with the Vaseline. It can tend to make the body heal with either a darker hypertrophic scar or, with a little luck, raised keloid tissue.
    BME:  How long is the healing period, generally, and what are the stages of healing?
    RYAN:  Complete healing varies on how they take care of it. With the wrap I’d say that the body will form a new layer of skin over the whole design within around two weeks. If they keep it unwrapped the body will scab slowing the healing process to maybe three weeks. If you add in agitation, picking, or scrubbing it could lengthen it out to a month or more.


    healing skin removal scarification
    2 days old
    healing skin removal scarification
    5 weeks old
    healing skin removal scarification
    3.5 months old
    BME:  What kind of results does skin removal produce — what do the resulting scars look like compared to other forms of scarification?
    RYAN:  With my removal it’s not really making the body heal in a specific way. It’s really just emphasizing the way an individual’s body will heal a cut. I’d say on a whole removals tend to give a better more distinct scar. But it’s very difficult to force the body to heal one way or another. Keloid tissue is more of a raised pinkish tissue. It’s basically what most people hope for with healing but it’s actually not that forthcoming in a lot of pieces. I’ve notice that the body heals more commonly with hypertrophic tissue. This tends to be more of a darker granulated, less raised tissue. What I shoot for with aftercare is either a very dark distinct hypertrophic scar or an evenly raised keloid scar. I never guarantee a certain look though, that would just be impossible.

    As for how it looks compared to other scars I’d say flesh removals don’t scar outward as much as some other techniques. Brandings tend to heal outward a lot more due to the heat damaging surrounding tissue. A lot of single line scarification tends to be deeper than removal so the line can heal a little wider due to it having a tendency to heal in more of a V-shape then wide U like some removals.
    BME:  Is there anything else you’d like to add?
    RYAN: 

    Yes! It’s really important that people remember that these procedures can be extremely dangerous if not done by a skilled professional with a decent amount of anatomical knowledge and experience working with skin. If not, people could end up in hospital! The difference between single line and removal can be compared to the difference between punch-and-taper piercing and transdermal implants. They might be similar but the latter is a lot more advanced and dangerous.

    If you’re interested in getting work done by Ryan, his shop Precision Body Arts is located at 109 West Pearl Street, Nashua, New Hampshire (or call 603-889-5788). You can also see more of his work in his gallery on BME (and of course you can view other artists working in similar styles in the general scarification galleries as well).

    As scarification techniques evolve, designs which previously would not have produced good, clear, dramatic looking scars become possible. The only limits are those of your imagination and of your artist’s skill. Choose wisely.

    – Matt Lodder   (iam:volatile)


    Matt Lodder is a 24 year old native of London England. He wrote his Masters dissertation for the University of Reading on “The Post-Modified Body: Invasive corporeal transformation and its effects on subjective identity”.

    Thanks so much to Ryan for agreeing to be interviewed, and for being so eloquent and forthcoming with information. Thanks also to Quentin (iam:kalima) and Vampy (iam:vampy) for their help in answering my questions, and also to Shell (iam:stunt_girl) for her last-minute assistance!

    Online presentation copyright © 2005 BMEzine.com LLC. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published online January 7th, 2005 by BMEzine.com LLC from La Paz, Mexico.


      

  • BME 2004 Year-End Awards (Top Contributors of 2004) [The Publisher’s Ring]

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt


    2004 Year-End Awards

    “Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”

    – Special Olympics Motto

    For the past few years (2002, 2003) I’ve cataloged the top contributors every year. I don’t know if it’s related, but every year since doing that the number of contributions from the top people has escalated — it was absolutely staggering just how much some people helped out. This article recognizes those people who went above and beyond in contributions to BME, as well as giving public thanks to the many “pseudostaff” members that actually keep the site alive and running… and as I finish up this article, I already have thousands of submissions in my queue for the 2005 awards. Let me begin by showing you what the people on this page got for their work (other than warm feelings of course, but that won’t keep you clothed).

    One of the prizes for making it to the list of people in this article is that you get a staff shirt. These staff shirts are utterly unavailable in any other way and are never reprinted or offered for sale. So if you see someone wearing one, they’re someone you can say “thanks” to (either that or they killed someone you can say thanks to and stole their clothes).

    The shirt is meant to be reminiscent of a classic sacred heart, although in truth, like most things on BME, the reality is much dirtier. If you won one, if anyone asks, I’m sure you can concoct your own “if you don’t know, you don’t want to know” answer, but in truth it’s a rendering of the amazing Enpassant’s heavily modified (and in this case saline inflated) genitals that appeared on the cover of BME. You can visit his BME/HARD gallery as well if you’d like.

    If you are on the list of people on this page, you should have received a message on IAM and via email explaining how to get your shirt (and possibly other prizes). If you didn’t, drop me a line ASAP to make sure your shirt is in the print run!

    And now on with the awards!

    		    

    Experience Review Team


    2004 saw 9,081 new articles and experiences posted to BME. Before being added to the site they are moderated (reviewed) by a panel of IAM members — they read everything that’s submitted, and then decided which should make it to the site. A total of 1,386 individual IAM members took part in the review system, but the following reviewers approved the most number of experiences to the site in 2004 (this doesn’t include the ones they rejected).

    Note: Links go to IAM pages and/or BME/HARD galleries as relevant.

    first place second place third place

    IAM:Don
    Don, rather appropriately a librarian from Coventry, UK, does much of the running of the experience review system for me. With 2,666 experiences personally approved this year he’s reviewed almost a third of all experiences added.

    IAM:BlueStar
    BlueStar, a twenty year old Photonics Engineering student from Niagara Falls, Canada approved 2,348 experiences this year.

    IAM:deadly pale
    Deadly Pale’s 1,917 approvals this year put Poland on the top-three map as well, so you won’t be hearing any “but you forgot about Poland” coming from BME’s competitors.



    IAM:Cerra
    Cerra is in the #4 spot, representing Halifax, Nova Scotia with 1,631 approvals.



    IAM:xPurifiedx
    Rounding out the top five with 1,525 approvals is Buffalo, New York’s xPurifiedx.



    IAM:rebekah
    Rebekah (who’s also the queen of the BME newsfeed) places sixth with 1,497 approvals.


    IAM:purrtykitty4m
    Just squeezing past a thousand is New Orleans’ Purrtykitty4m with 1,046 approval reviews.


    IAM:drip
    With 1,010 reviewed stories posted this year, Drip ensures that iam:Christian is well represented in spot number eight.

    The folks above are all in the “over a thousand” club in terms of successful positive reviews for the year. Below are the runners up (who also deserve a lot of thanks for their help) — each of them reviewed over five hundred approved experiences this year:

    1. der_narr (903)
    2. The Stolen Child (891)
    3. WasabiTurtle (694)
    4. instigator (679)

    1. Fuzzybeast (635)
    2. seahorse girl (613)
    3. Bear151556 (551)
    4. Uberkitty (539)

    1. Shit Disturber (520)
    2. Doldrums (509)
    3. cuthalcoven (505)

    Top Experience Authors


    Those 9,081 experiences had 7,277 distinct authors, many of whom wrote more than one story. The top BME authors of the year 2004 in terms of number of stories written were:

    first place second<br /> place third<br /> place

    IAM:Uberkitty
    Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Uberkitty wrote a truly staggering thirty one experiences for BME in 2004. That’s more than one every two weeks!
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

    IAM:Dawnie
    Dawnie, a charming (and kind of pervy) Southern Belle, is responsible for a total of twenty five experiences, many in BME/HARD, putting her in second place.
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

    IAM:BlueStar
    Rounding out third with an incredible twenty two stories is BlueStar, who’s also a medal-ranked winner on the review team.
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22



    IAM:der_narr
    With seventeen stories written this year, Duisburg, Germany’s der_narr ties for fourth place.
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17



    IAM:mythernal
    Also with seventeen stories this year and tying for fourth place is Michigan pagan Mythernal.
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17



    IAM:purrtykitty4m
    Placing fifth with a still impressive sixteen stories written this year, Purrtykitty4m ranks as both a top writer and top reviewer on BME.
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16



    IAM:cuthalcoven
    Placing sixth with fourteen stories in 2004 (plus an interview she did with her mother) is Toledo’s Cuthalcoven.
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13



    IAM:porcelina
    Ranking lucky number seven is Porcelina from Perth, Australia.
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

    The runners up for top experiences are as follows (many are tied, thus the repeating numbers):

    8. Flutterfly (11 stories)
    8. KoLdFroNt (11)
    8. Cerra (11)
    9. hunterjackson (10)
    		 9. The Stolen Child (10)
    9. Marsdweller (10)
    9. rwethereyet (10)
    9. DirtyPrettyThings (10)
    		 10. JuanKi (9)
    11. Orilind (8)
    11. Asurfael (8)
    11. SadisticSarah (8)
    11. Shamus Greenman (8)

    Top Image Submitters
     Warning: This part of the article contains some
    adult photos!


    This is where things really get crazy! Of course the largest section of the site is the image galleries; this year 130,319 pictures were added by a total of 14,668 separate people. The top submitters donated truly staggering quantities of images, and competition was tight and fierce. Skipping over Kokomi’s almost ludicrous quantity, the next three were separated by only fifty images! The top BME image submitters of 2004 are:

    first place second<br /> place third<br /> place

    Kokomi
    Writing anonymously from Germany, Kokomi has this year submitted 3,170 new images to his popular bonus gallery in BME/HARD — and he’s ranked every year we’ve tracked submissions!

    IAM:rwethereyet
    Not only did Walkerton’s rwethereyet submit 1,881 images to both his bonus gallery and other parts of BME, but he also designed a BME shirt based on his interests!

    IAM:KIVAKA
    A generous person and talented piercer, as the number three image submitter and the top piercer for 2004, Kivaka represents Lockport, IL’s Tattoo City. 1,844 images have been added by him this year.



    IAM:MWM416
    With 1,828 Marty came so close to the top three, and were it not for being fired for refusing to pierce a minor, he’d be there. He currently pierces at Worcester, MA’s Piercing Emporium.



    Bea & Lehni
    With 1,368 new pictures added to their gallery, these kinky German swingers stay quite popular!



    IAM:nobcatz
    Perhaps tired from submitting well over two thousand images last year (he was the top contributor of 2003), with 1,366 pictures in 2004, Japan’s Nobcatz again ranks among BME’s most prolific photographers.



    IAM:HeadlessLego
    With both a popular bonus gallery and images in nearly all sections of the site, Andie has sent us 1,288 photos this year.



    IAM:Efix
    With 1,277 photos this year both in his ritual gallery, his scarification gallery, and across the site as a piercer, D-Markation, Quebec City’s Efix is eighth on our list of contributors and the third piercer on the list.
     



    IAM:dispel
    With 1,227 photos this year, this UK photographer (watch out for him at conventions!) has extensively documented BE and Vampy’s work.



    Ars
    Having added 1,124 to his creative bonus gallery in BME/HARD, Ars rounds out tenth place on our contributor’s list.



    IAM:perk900
    Always gonzo, Philadelphia’s Perk900 has added 1,084 pictures to BME this year, the last on our list to crack a thousand.



    WenchyBev & Neil
    With 933 new pictures resurrecting their gallery in 2004, WenchyBev and Neil’s bonus gallery in BME/HARD continues to grow.



    IAM:dsw
    At the core of Brasil’s +3 suspension team, dsw has contributed 821 pictures over 2004.
     



    IAM:x31337x
    Photographer x31337x has contributed 784 images this year, many of them documenting Rites of Passage.



    IAM:Cerra
    The only person to be a ranking experience reviewer, top writer, and image contributor for 2004, Cerra added 821 images.



    UrbanSoul
    My kinky friend UrbanSoul from Italy has added 671 new pictures to his BME/HARD bonus gallery this year.



    IAM:Asurfael
    Scandinavia’s Asurfael has contributed 670 image in 2004, injecting some much needed rock’n’roll into BME/HARD via her bonus
    gallery    .



    IAM:VEAL
    The naughtiest housewife I know, VEAL has added 652 images to her bonus gallery and elsewhere in
    2004..


    The runners up for top image submitter were as follow:

    1. Codezero (644 pictures)
    2. jonathanpiercing (640)
    3. AlmightyStudios (629)
    4. MontanaPiercer (623)
    5. Joao_Malabares (587)
    6. lilfunky1 (552)
    7. stainless (551)
    8. j_scarab (540)
    9. Cenobitez (536)
    10. shadow (523)

    1. babakhin (505)
    2. (anonymous) (490)
    3. glider (467)
    4. Kirsten (451)
    5. Vex Hecubus (427)
    6. theSearcher (422)
    7. MiZ C (413)
    8. inksation (412)
    9. Alcan (387)
    10. hypermike (379)
      vampy (379)

    1. Big Rick (362)
    2. Sicklove (360)
    3. Foxx (341)
    4. LargeGauge (331)
    5. mac13mac13 (318)
    6. brian (303)
    7. ScabBoy (285)
    8. PiercedPuff (283)
    9. peco (281)
    10. la negra (279)
    11. luvpain99 (269)

    BME/News Team


    BME/News is one of my favorite sections of BME. It includes a number of columns and articles from the top body modification writers (and doers) around the world, as well as a newsfeed which tracks articles in the mainstream news that are of particular relevance to BME readers. Below are some of the people who more actively made BME/News possible in 2004.


    The Lizardman
    The incredible, amazing Lizardman, Erik Sprague, writes both a monthly column for BME and a regular “ask the Lizardman” Q&A. Visit him on IAM or at his website for more on his adventures (and his tour
    schedule)

    Jim Ward
    Jim Ward, founder of both the world’s first piercing studio and piercing magazine, documents that history in his fascinating Running the Gauntlet. Visit him at Gauntlet Enterprises.

    />
    Fakir Musafar
    I’m deeply honored to have the legendary Fakir Musafar, who should need little introduction, writing for BME. Visit him at BodyPlay.com to learn more about his many other projects.

    (The late) Cora Birk
    You feared him as yttrx and then cried with him as he transitioned to a woman under the name Cora Birk. This gender swap, documented in his Shapeshift column, was ultimately cut short as he became Jamix.
    Stay tuned?

    Marisa Kakoulas
    Marisa’s new column Legal Link addresses legal issues for the modified community, and is a companion to her upcoming book on tattoo law. And yes, she’s a real NYC lawyer, so don’t mess with her.

    IAM:rebekah
    While other people help as well, Rebekah’s contribution of 2,256 stories to the BME Newsfeed were absolutely essential in keeping it running (and put her nearly two thousand stories ahead of any other person).

    QOD Staff


    BME’s “question of the day” service remains hugely popular, having been asked thousands of questions over the last year. Not including me, the following staff members helped out this year by each answering over two hundred questions a piece from readers:


    IAM:Vampy
    This years most prolific QOD answering, slightly exceeding “of the day” with 387 answers in 2004, performance and body artist Vampy is currently best known for her work with UK
    suspension team Body Evolution.

    IAM:Lori St. Leone
    One of BME’s many expats, Alaskan Lori St. Leone owns Darwin, Australia’s Vogue Body
    Piercing    . She’s answered 375 questions for BME readers (and her fans) this year.

    IAM:Derek Lowe
    Derek Lowe, APP piercer at Saint Sabrina’s in Minneapolis masculinizes our top three
    by answering 238 QODs in 2004.

    Additional work was done by Gary, Sean Philips, Monte, Shawn Porter, Rachel Larratt, Phish, and Ryan Worden.

    Other BME Staff


    Finally, the people below are some of the core individuals who kept BME running in 2004.


    IAM:>glider
    Hey, it’s me! I think you know what I do already, right?

    IAM:Rachel
    My beautiful and brilliant wife Rachel writes and photographs for BME, handles all of our
    finances, and is the publisher of her own magazine LOOSE.

    IAM:Jen
    Jen handles all of BME’s online customer support, out of a cold, cold office in the Maritimes.

    IAM:CT
    Apparently having forgiven me for endangering his wedding ceremony, Mike takes care of many of the emergency technical issues on BME and IAM and helps keep everything online (either that or he’s planning the greatest revenge of all time).

    IAM:Dita
    For years now Dita has worked hard to maintain the BME
    Japan     portal and has brought BME to hundreds of thousands of new readers through it.

    IAM:1101001
    Jon has written (and maintains) many of the software tools on BME like the link engine and
    iam.crush2. He’s also one of the core forces behind Fishing Fury.

    IAM:Badseeds
    Ryan and Corrie Worden run BMEshop start to finish. I don’t know if that makes them “staff” or not, but they deserve to be here!

    IAM:Vanilla
    Not quite so “vanilla” in real life, Danielle not only provided essential help on IAM management in 2004, but she also maintains the wonderful IAM:INFO help site.

    IAM:badur
    Hailing from exotic Madagascar, Toronto designer Badur is responsible for the better looking
    parts of BME’s look, was half of the BME Road Trip, co-organized BMEFEST 2004, and more.

    There are a lot of people I’ve missed I’m sure (and if you think I missed you and you want
    your shirt, don’t be afraid to write me — I’m talking to you, Blake, co-organizer of BMEFEST 2004).
    You’ve seen the numbers though — you know that this is only the tip of the iceberg when
    it comes to BME’s nebulous staff of hundreds of thousands of contributors around the world. I
    wish I could thank every one of those people here, but clearly that’s not possible. However,
    BME stands as a legacy to their efforts, and everyone who’s helped make it happen deserves
    thanks.

    See you in 2005!


    Shannon Larratt
    BME.com

  • Forty is the new twenty. [Guest Column]

    Written by

    BME

      


    Forty is the new twenty.

    By Mandi Konesni

    My mother is my hero, and she’s the greatest and strongest woman I know. Having said that, most people are probably rolling their eyes and thinking of their own mother. That, and a lot of you probably think I’m biased, which I more than likely am.


    “Age is something that doesn’t matter, unless you are cheese.”


    – Billie Burke

    Mother and Daughter


    “The Backstory”

    My mom was taken away from her mother when she was young, and was pushed from foster home to foster home. Sometimes, they weren’t exactly the nice place they were thought to be.

    She emerged from high school to set off on her own life, but was plagued by chronic asthma so bad she could hardly walk out of the front door without having an attack. The doctors put her on Prednisone, a corticosteroid. After years of being on it, she weighed 370lbs. Rather than hiding because of her asthma, she was hiding because of her weight. It hurt that she wouldn’t come to our school performances and things that were important to us. We didn’t see what she saw when she looked in the mirror… we saw a loving and caring mother who would do anything for us.

    My mom swore when she was younger that if she ever hit three hundred pounds, she would commit suicide rather than live a life of relying on others for daily tasks. After she hit almost four hundred pounds, she hit rock bottom. She got depressed and suicidal, and my dad called hourly just to make sure she was still alive. When I think of how close we came to not having her here, I still get tears in my eyes. Then on Christmas Eve she had a massive asthma attack. She almost died in front of us, and it took four paramedics to carry the stretcher to the ambulance. She was mortified, and came out of the hospital determined to find a better life.

    After a year of waiting and going through tests, she was finally approved for gastric bypass surgery. It took two years for her to lose the weight, but she now weighs a hundred and forty pounds and looks absolutely amazing. However, she still has the excess skin to be removed, and because of that, she still feels that she doesn’t belong in her own body — that she’s a prisoner of her own flesh.


    “Modified Mom”

    Mom found an outlet for herself, a niche that allowed her to be happy with the way she looked when she saw herself in the mirror: Mom got pierced.

    Her first piercings were her nipples. She got them done at Juki’s Tattoo in Toledo, but had to take them out to get tests done at random times because of her asthma and upcoming surgery. Finally she got tired of spending money on re-piercing them, and ended up learning to do them herself. My mom has pierced her own nipples five times each, and has kept them open for years. Then she decided she wanted her hood pierced, but was so embarrassed by the excess skin that she didn’t want to go to a piercer to do it. I bought her the supplies she needed as a birthday gift, and she pierced her own horizontal hood. After a week, she decided that she didn’t like it and wanted it vertical — promptly taking it out and re-piercing it. A week later she had to re-pierce yet again because the bead popped out and the ring was lost. A self-done navel piercing, two self-done cartilage piercings, and a professional tongue piercing soon followed; as well as three tattoos.


    Looking at my mom now is amazing. She’s a totally different person. She smiles and laughs, she has the confidence to show off her modifications, and help other people decide if piercings and tattoos are right for them. She allows her children to find their own way as well, knowing that her modifications became such a huge part of her life that she couldn’t possibly restrict that happiness from us. She’s my best friend and I know I can tell her anything and she’ll understand. Finding herself has led her to re-discover her long-lost childhood and has helped her to better redefine herself as a woman, not as a forty-something year old housewife and mother.


    “Mom Speak”

    After getting gastric bypass surgery, what made you decide to modify your body further?

    I’ve always found piercings and tattoos sexy, but my weight kept me away. I was afraid people would say rude things and make fun of me if I tried looking “sexy” at 370 pounds. At thirty-eight years old, I figured that if I didn’t get the things I wanted done soon then I wouldn’t do them at all. Unfortunately, it worked too good and I couldn’t stop. Besides, now, I can look down and see my piercings!

    Do you have any specific reasons or meanings for the modifications that you have gotten?

    Tinkerbell was kind of a “Neverland” thing. She’s magical and cute, reminding me that just because I’m not a child anymore doesn’t mean I can’t still have that naivety and innocence that I long to keep. My heart tattoo was a celebration of losing the first two hundred pounds. I felt brand new, and decided to get my tattoo as a permanent reminder of how far I had come. The Leo sign was honestly a compliment to Tinkerbell when I got it, but now I see it as an embodiment of myself — a true Leo in every way, shape, and form.


    My birthday present tongue piercing I did it mainly for the shock value. I’m a 42 year old woman with a tongue piercing, and I absolutely love it. My nipples I got done before I had lost the weight. I did them to feel sexy, to feel that I had something special about me that other people couldn’t see. I always loved the look of them, and felt they made me more womanly. My hood piercing was inspired by Marilyn Chambers. She’s a porn star, and in “Behind the Green Door” she had a hood piercing and I was captivated by it. I wanted one ever since! Also, because I pierced it myself, it’s deeply personal and symbolic of my inner strength that I never knew I had.

    My navel was a spur of the moment thing… I thought it was cute, but never thought and overweight woman could have one. Once I lost the weight, I decided to go for it, even with the excess skin kind of covering it.

    When people first find out about your piercings and tattoos, what is the first reaction? Is there a different between age groups?

    The first reaction is probably disbelief and shock. People don’t think that a forty-two year old housewife would have modifications, and don’t believe that I do. When they get over that, they always want to see them, even the more private ones. The people who know me almost expect it of me — nothing about me is what you could call “average”! To be honest, there isn’t really much of a difference between age groups. People who are in their teens react the same way as people who are sixty or seventy years old. It’s very accepted nowadays, and people are truly interested in the decorations I have.

    If your husband or family complained (as in the recent Dear Abby column) what would your response to them be? How would you feel if they said you were too “old” for such things?

    I would tell them that it’s none of their business. Honestly, my piercings and tattoos are highly personal and symbolic of how far I’ve come. No one has a right to tell me what I can and can’t do to my body, especially because I’ve worked so long to like myself in it. What does age have to do with it anyways? I’m a woman, not a corpse! As a human, we have the basic right to sate our curiously and make ourselves happy. No one should come between that. A husband should support his wife in any endeavor, even if it’s not something he particularly enjoys.

    What would be your advice to the woman (not the husband) in the “Dear Abby” situation?

    If she got the piercings for herself to make herself happy, there’s something to be said when your husband won’t support that. It’s the same thing as in the sixties when women burned their bras. Men in relationships don’t want their wives to suddenly be liberated. However, he pledged to love her and support her no matter what when he stood on the altar. A bit of metal doesn’t change the person he married, but his reaction says volumes. I say, more power to her! My husband didn’t necessarily want me to get the piercings and tattoos that I’ve gotten… but he supported me. Now he refuses to let me even think of taking them out, because he loves them so much!

    What role did your weight loss surgery play in your decision to get the piercings and tattoos that you wanted?

    Everything. I felt more sexy and more womanly inside, and wanted to express that wanton abandonment for all to see. Most of my piercings are sexual in nature, and I did that on purpose. When you’re over forty, it’s hard to feel sexy in your own right. Every little bit helps! Without the surgery, I probably would have still gotten everything except the Leo tattoo and the navel… only because I wouldn’t have pulled my pants down to get the tattoo, and I felt I was too big for a navel piercing. I’m so glad that I’m not limited by those misconceptions anymore, and I feel good enough about myself that I can change my body however I want to, without worrying about what others will think of me.

    After your kids watched you struggle with your weight, and the consequences of losing it, how does it make you feel knowing that they look to you as a hero, and are following in your modification footsteps?

    I am who I am because of the things that I went though. I wouldn’t wish my past on anyone, but I wouldn’t change it either. It’s made me the person that I am today. I’m nobody’s hero, but every mother wants her kids to look up to her, and if my children think that I’m a hero it makes what I went through all the better.

    Following in my footsteps, you know… I didn’t realize that’s what they were doing. I made it “ok” for them to express their own individuality. I’m not one of those mothers whose kids are too afraid to ask for a piercing, so if they wanted something like that, they knew they could ask and I’d probably let them. Well, I suppose I should say “within reason”… otherwise that’ll probably come back to bite me in the ass!

    Any further comments you’d like to share?

    Yes. I think that people in this world need to grow up. As a forty-two year old woman, I want to tell Dear Abby and all columnists like her that the times are changing. If you’re writing to the public you need to open up your eyes and mind. Not everyone fits into this “cookie-cutter” mold you seem to have surrounded yourself with. I’m happy, and I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my surgery and subsequent modifications. You can’t tell me that my happiness should be forsaken just to fit into society’s misconceptions. I’d rather be a happily modified woman than another suicide statistic.


    Mandi Konesni (iam:cuthalcoven) is is a full-time student studying English and Abnormal Psychology. She spends a lot of time rehabilitating wild animals and rockhounding, as well as reviewing experiences for BME. She plans to eventually teach psychology in Toledo, Ohio.

    Online presentation copyright © 2004 Mandi Konesni and BMEzine.com LLC. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published online December 19th, 2004 by BMEzine.com LLC in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.


      

  • Dear Abby, You Still Suck [The Publisher’s Ring]

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt



    Dear Abby, You Still Suck

    It is a sad commentary of our times when our young must seek advice and counsel from “Dear Abby”.

    – Abigail Van Buren

    The following letter appeared in today’s “Dear Abby” column. This isn’t the first time I’ve commented on one of America’s most widely syndicated know-it-all know-nothings, but her stupidity continues to escalate and it really must be commented on once again. To put it into deeper context, the column prides itself on having “common sense and a youthful perspective.” See if you can find these, because I can find neither.

    DEAR ABBY: My beautiful wife, “Doreen,” turned 41 a couple of months ago. Since then she has had extra piercings in her ears and has taken to wearing thumb rings, toe rings and ankle bracelets. Yesterday she pierced her navel. I am embarrassed for her. We have a 13-year-old daughter who is also embarrassed for her. How do I tell Doreen she looks silly? — NOT SO HIP IN CALIFORNIA

    DEAR NOT SO HIP: Your wife’s fetish brings new meaning to the term “heavy metal.” It shouldn’t be necessary to give her a lecture. Just walk in carrying a powerful magnet. That should send a message.
    Yeah, it’ll send a message alright. It sends the message that Jeanne Phillips (aka “Abby”) is no metallurgist — no jewelry commonly used in body piercing is in fact magnetic. That said, let’s look at the hatred in her letter more closely.

    You’d think she’d be more open minded, especially considering that on November 8, 2002, Jeanne told a mother to support her daughter’s involvement in pornography. But in today’s letter she begins by calling a couple extra earrings and a navel piercing a “fetish”. It’s not a fetish. At that level it’s barely even a fashion decision, and there are easily hundreds of thousands of other women over forty with navel piercings. It’s far from a lifestyle change, let alone a drastic one that could shatter a thirteen year old’s view of their mother. Overreact much?

    The second part of her response isn’t just typically ignorant; it’s hateful. It in effect denounces the wife’s obtaining of a navel piercing as so repugnant or foolish that it doesn’t deserve a spoken response, and finishes by making what is in effect a joke about violence and wife abuse. Let’s swap in virtual Anne Coulter to illustrate Abby’s response in a new context.

    DEAR ANNE: My beautiful niece, “Doreen,” turned 16 a couple of months ago. Since then she has been wearing revealing clothing and talking to boys. Yesterday she wore a tube top to school. My son is embarrassed for her. How do I make it clear to Doreen that she looks like a slut? — CONCERNED IN CANADA

    DEAR CONCERNED: Your niece’s whorefest gives new meaning to the term “McTrampsalot”. You shouldn’t have to tell her. Just have a buddy of yours rape her. That should send a message.

    Extreme and distasteful example? You bet. But don’t deny that Ms. Dear Abby is being very clear in her message — body piercing, even of the most minor sort, is unacceptable behavior deserving of derision and abuse, and that this abuse and derision is a “common sense” response by reasonable people. Because of her continued ignorant and hateful statements Jeanne Phillips is directly responsible for introducing pain into the lives of both young people and adults, and the newspapers that syndicate her column share in that blame. It’s time for the media to stop unquestioningly printing hatred and abuse like this.

    Pauline “Abigail Van Buren” Phillips, Jeanne Phillips’ mother and the founder of the “Dear Abby” column once received a letter from a reader concerned that a gay couple had moved into their neighborhood, and wanted her advice on what they could do to improve the quality of the neighborhood. “You could move,” Abigail famously replied. It’s a sad reflection on the Abby of this generation that Jeanne lacked the moral strength of character to tell this husband to respect his wife’s freedom of expression and zest for life.

    I said it in the title, I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again here: Dear Abby, YOU SUCK.

    		 BME is filled with the stories of many forty- and fifty-somethings (and older) telling their stories about body modification. Below are links to a few stories written about navel piercing by older women. My hope is that Ms. Dear Abby takes the time to read these and perhaps learns something. Just Do It!!!!! (43)
    “I told my husband that after all this time of doing what is expected that I had a wild child inside me just waiting to be born. He said he hopes this is as wild as the child was going to get. I think it looks great and it makes me feel good about myself and if the truth be known, the ‘old guy’ likes it too!”

    My Navel at 43
    “I feel much better about myself than I did before this piercing. I had always thought I was fat and now, I feel like my stomach is beautiful and I don’t always need to hide my figure.”

    My commitment to nurture myself (43)
    “The routine of bathing and taking time to cleanse and maintain my piercings reinforces that I need to take time for my own needs. I love the way my body looks with my jewelry. I am well and I am beautiful.”

    My 51 year old wife – got to love her
    “To her, I have to say ‘WHAT A GIRL’ she was great and at 50 and still willing to be ‘out there’ looking good — you have to love her for it and I do.”

    Suburban Mom takes the plunge (40)
    “I’m 40, a mother of three, and a corporate attorney. A few months ago, I started joking around with my 10-year-old daughter about having my bellybutton pierced. She was horrified by the idea. Moms just don’t DO that!”

    You don’t have to be young! (42)
    “I took off another 10 lbs, and decided to give myself the impetus for the last 5 by making my tummy the star attraction.”

    Not too old to rock ’n roll (46)
    “I had admired navel piercings on others, and I thought, why not? At 46 and after 2 children, I certainly didn’t look like I did at 20, but in my mind I’m FAR from over the hill. You’re as young as you feel!!!”

    A mid-life crisis navel piercing. (47)
    “On the 10th of February, my girlfriend and I were both turning 47 and in a fit of mid-life crisis, she decided that we should both get our navels pierced.”

    Never Too Old (44)
    “Yes, my teenage son is completely mortified and I have yet to tell my mother. I haven’t decided if I’m the coolest mom on the block, or the biggest dork this side of 40. Then again, what you think of me is none of my business.”



    My “old” friend Amy, 44 years old, mother of two, granny of one, happily married, full of life… pierced and painted. Visit her on IAM.


    Shannon Larratt
    BME.com

  • Pierced Eyeglasses [The Publisher’s Ring]

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt



    Pierced Eyeglasses


    “People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.”

    – R. Buckminster Fuller

    The idea of hanging eyeglasses from a piercing or a combination of piercings or even transdermal implants is something that a lot of us have toyed with — as I was writing this, my old boss Tom Brazda reminded me that almost ten years ago we made a set of them built around a 10ga bridge piercing (with both left and right-handed threading to make it adjustable). That said, I don’t think we ever took pictures, so maybe I’m making it up because I want to steal James Sooy’s thunder. He’s who sent me this gorgeous example of a piercing-mounted set of eyeglasses:
     

    James is an artist currently designing and painting for Texas-based Magnificent Egos, a minatures (as in gaming) company. Art consumes all of his time, professionally and personally, and much of it is centered around character design, which gives him both time — and money — to fantasize about mods on fictional characters. With the help of his friend Oliver (who many of you know as one of the founding members and guerrilla engineers of the suspension group TSD) this fantasy was made real.
    BME:  How did you come up with the idea of attaching a pair of glasses to a piercing?
    JAMES:  I’m not sure… some time during the drooling days of high school the idea came to me. I kept it in mind over the years and got the bridge piercing this July and then started looking to make it happen. Maybe it had something to do with not being able to wear contacts.
    OLIVER:  I had originally considered making a pair of glasses that hung from a bridge piercing for myself about ten years ago. It was just one of those things that seemed so obvious that I was surprised I hadn’t seen it done. I never got around to doing it then, since I wasn’t too keen on getting a bridge piercing. When I got a call from James inquiring if I could help him with some jewelry he wanted to make, and then he mentioned he wanted to do the glasses as well, I jumped on the opportunity. He already had the piercing done over at Obscurities, here in Dallas, so I knew he was more serious about it than I ever was.
    BME:  And how did you guys formalize the design?
    JAMES:  Oliver and I sat down for about five minutes one night to think over what would need to be done and he got straight to work making the brackets out of aluminum with a small mill in his garage!
    OLIVER:  Originally we were discussing and sketching ideas that would have been considerably more involved to produce. The ones that we ended up making aren’t necessarily the final product, but seemed the best and easiest way to test the viability of the idea. The brackets were machined from aluminum, roughly to shape and then drilled and tapped on my little tabletop Sherline mill — a machine that’s far more suited to this size project than what I normally use it for! After a fair bit of tweaking and polishing with files and abrasives we ended up with what you see. The part you don’t see is a barbell from Anatometal.
    JAMES:  The threading on the barbell was 1.2 mm, which happens to be a relatively uncommon and expensive thread (as far as screws go). The screws ended up delaying the project about a month. We used some lenses out of an old pair of glasses I had at first, but I decided to get some new lenses once everything else was finished.
    BME:  What’s it like actually wearing it? What does it feel like?
    JAMES:  They feel exactly like a regular pair of glasses, actually. I put the nose pads on to keep them from swinging around, so all the pressure is placed there, just like any other pair of glasses. Since they have no frame on the side I can wear them while I sleep and still roll onto my side.
    BME:  Good thinking; so the piercing is more of a balance point than something structural. Does that make it more than just a “show piece”, and into something that you wear for real?
    JAMES:  I’ve only had them for about a week now, but I’ve been sleeping and showering in them. I hadn’t taken them off in four days when one of the brackets cut me while I was asleep; I’d forgotten to sand the edges and they were still razor sharp. They’re back on now and seem reliable enough to take on a two week trip over the holidays; I doubt I’ll need to take them off during that time. Taking them on and off is a bit of a hassle, as it involves taking a tiny screwdriver and unscrewing them while they’re on my face — about a 5 to 10 minute process — which I suppose is about what you’d spend with contacts.
    BME:  I hope they don’t get caught on anything… I suppose that could tear them out rather unpleasantly. Any thoughts on how the engineering might change for the next model?
    OLIVER:  This pair isn’t quite what I was looking for both in design terms and in terms of fit. I don’t think they sit at quite the right angle to his face and we both want them to sit a little closer to his eyes, so we’ll probably make another pair in the near future. Much as there are so many designs and styles of eyeglasses currently being manufactured, I think there are a number of ways this design could be improved upon. I certainly think they look neat and ended up being far more subtle than I thought they would be. I didn’t even realize he was wearing them when I saw him a few days later, and he mentioned that most people don’t notice that they are only attached to the piercing.
    BME:  What’s next?
    JAMES:  I suppose I could try to make marketable version if I had ambition to do so — something easier to take on and off. As for me I only have run of the mill tattoos and piercings planned right now, but seeing how some of my friends and family are in the community and looking to push the frontier, it means I have the manpower at hand to try out what comes to mind, so I’ll keep trying out any of my feasible ideas. Being young and unsure where my future will lead, I’m quite reserved about anything permanent and visible, which limits what I’m willing to do right now… As well as not having the time or resources to work on any major projects, so it’ll just be the ones that steadily work their way in, like the glasses.
    BME:  Since people are going to ask me, I have to ask… are these for sale?
    JAMES:  As far as money I only spent about $10 on screws and $75 for new lenses. And I bought Oliver a meal.
    OLIVER:  I don’t have any intention at this point of pursuing the idea commercially but it’s not something I’m averse to doing. If others were interested I might work something out with them. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing a more developed version of these glasses from the existing body jewelry companies. I know there are any number of people here on IAM that could probably do a much better job both in the design and execution.

    Be sure to visit James over at jamessooy.com, and of course you can visit Oliver at iam:antagonist. Thanks to both of them for taking the time to talk to BME, and for thinking creatively about body modification… Too few people understand that it’s OK to try something different or new.

    Finally, I apologize that an article on the creative application of piercings has such an uncreative title.


    Shannon Larratt
    BME.com

  • A brief history of BME and reflections on the first ten years [The Publisher’s Ring]

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt


    A brief history of BME
    and reflections on the first ten years


    “Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.”

    – I COR 13:7-8

    Ten years have passed since BME was first uploaded. In that time it has gone from being one of the first websites on the Internet to being one of the oldest and most successful, not only in body modification, but of all subjects. I have a pretty bad memory, so it’s possible that some of these things are out of order, but let me try and tell you how BME came to be what it is now.

    Following are some of the looks that BME has had over the years; unfortunately no archive that I know of exists for versions of BME prior to 1997. If anyone reading this has earlier versions, please send them my way!

    In the summer of 1994 I was at a turning point in my life. On one hand I was building the world’s first Internet casino, was about to be featured in WIRED magazine for it, and had a flagship telephony product that was being hailed as revolutionary. On the other hand, I was fresh out of psychiatric prison, at odds with my family (it was my mother who had me drugged and locked up after I grew up to be “too weird” for her sensibilities), and had just moved back to Toronto. I was living with a stewardess at the time, which gave me a lot of unattended time to myself as I enjoyed her fancy apartment.

    I’d always been “online”, but only via the BBSs I accessed using my text-only DOS-based computer. One of the systems I used had a primitive USENET gateway (newsgroups; now Google Groups) which allowed access to rec.arts.bodyart, a discussion group for all things body modification. The BBS I was using only allowed reading, not posting, so after a week or so of monitoring it in silence I set myself up with a full Internet account and “delurked”. One short week after that — August 15th, 1994 — I made the following post:

    Is anyone out there interested in starting an e-zine dedicated to piercing and bodyart? It’s a project I would like to get started... I have access to a 1200dpi scanner, and lots of equipment, and have various piercings of my own I could use, but obiously [sic] I need help... If anyone is interested please email me.

    For a first issue I would like to make a sort-of-FAQ with photos (among other stuff) — something that newbies could ftp and would answer a lot of question — but I don’t want to use magazine pictures so I would need people to mail me pictures or email me scans of stuff... not just finished piercings but procedural photos if you have an unusual piece of pierce. (I will probably use photos of having an 8mm dermal punch put through my conch.)

    		      

    Response was not very strong, although I did get a few photos, but I think it was luck that made the biggest difference. My ears were stretched to over an inch using homemade jewelry, but I wanted something better. In my search I happened to walk into Stainless Studios where I met Tom Brazda. He’d just hired Ryan Worden (who now runs BMEshop) to run the counter, and in September 1994 hired me to make jewelry, even though I’d never done it before, let alone even operated a lathe. Also working at Stainless Studios was Ryan O’Brien who would later run BMEbooks. In any case, with the help of their customers and portfolio (and my friend Saira’s computer, which was much better than my own), on the evening of December 7th, 1994 I was able to announce BME’s creation.


    Newsgroups: rec.arts.bodyart
    Date: Tues, Dec 6 1994 10:02 pm EST
    Subject: Body Art Magazine / WWW Site

    Ok, well the magazine is much more on its way! The initial pictures from the first issue are available on my WWW site.

    http://www.io.org/~glider

    There are a bunch of pictures: hand web, large piercings, stretching, implant surgery, eyebrow... they are 1200dpi colour 24bit scans, all 640x480 in .jpg format — check it out. Text will be there soon too...

    shannon larratt
    [email protected]

    It was amazing how quickly the site grew. As soon as it was up, word started to spread and people started sending in their pictures and stories as well. At this point it was nothing but a few text-only menus with links to images which could be downloaded and viewed later, but bandwidth began to spike — by December 15th it was already clear that female genital piercings drew a server-crushing amount of bandwidth!

    Within a few months BME was ranked as the 25th most popular site on the fledgling Internet — of all subjects. As the Internet grew, BME normalized to about 850th of the four billion or so sites now online, but bandwidth continued to grow, cracking a million hits in the first month, and then quickly moving up to a million daily and later twenty million daily! Hosting wasn’t cheap back then, but in another “just got lucky” moment that seems to define BME, one of Internex Online’s employees turned out to be a fan of the site and helped convince her bosses that BME deserved free hosting, which they continued to provide until they were bought out by a larger telecom corporation.

    That company wasn’t willing to provide me with free hosting, but they understood the business potential of the volume of readership BME was drawing. We had a series of increasingly unpleasant meetings discussing advertising, memberships, and so on. As luck would have it again, an employee of another small hosting company — Quintessential Communications (now Sound Concept) — offered me hosting under their “FreeQ” banner and with their help was able to stall becoming commercial for a few more years.

    Eventually bandwidth bills caught up to Gypsy and Brian at Quintessential, and BME did take advertising, getting early support from companies like Anatometal and Unimax which was essential in keeping BME afloat. At about this time we started adding paid membership options as well, which also started to allow me to dedicate more and more time to maintaining the site and building software tools to improve it. Now that we were paying for our bandwidth usage (which was cripplingly expensive back then, and we often ran at a dramatic loss), BME bounced between ISPs a little to keep costs low, including a few more years with a new company owned by Paul Chvostek, the founder of the company who’d offered us hosting back in 1994!

    BME also expanded into BME/extreme with the help of Shawn Porter who I met after the death of body modification pioneer Jack Yount — we officially launched BME/extreme on the first anniversary of Jack’s death. A little later BME/HARD was launched using all the images I’d been getting from people for the first few years that I deemed “too dirty” to use in the main sections. I’d resisted adding them because I didn’t want erotic aspects to dominate the site, but the fact is that erotic application of body modification and play is a significant sociocultural demographic, and it would be contrary to BME’s mandate of accurately representing this community to exclude it any longer. With that decision, BME had matured as a commercial entity and began to be able to stand on its own two feet.

    However, BME’s financial growth brought its own problems. The first time we offered online memberships we had virtually no fraud control in place (no one did; it was too early). We were later horrified to discover that we had a fraud rate of about 75%, which instantly destroyed that billing system. I later moved on to Online Financial Systems, an early third-party adult processing competitor to companies like Ccbill (no mainstream billing service would take BME, so we had to work with people processing for pornographic sites). As much as the credit card companies “tolerate” adult sites (because they are profitable), they make life hell for them — increased rates, draconian charge-back policies, aggressive security hold-backs, and so on, and that’s if you can even find a bank willing to take on an adult customer. Most will not. Because of this BME found itself processing out of the Bahamas. The site was making enough money to pay its bills, but then the bank started getting slow on their transfers to us… and slower… “sorry, there’s a technical problem down here… you’ll get the money next month, we’re very sorry…”

    After months of charges (as well as a security deposit and a rolling hold-back) had been sequestered in their tropical holding cells, it became clear they’d defrauded us and we had little to no recourse to reclaim it.

    It took a few months of negotiations with new banks but eventually BME was back taking memberships — although this cycle of economic abuse would happen several more times, and I expect it to happen several more times in the future. Sometimes all it takes is the wrong person at corporate headquarters to clue in to what BME represents and we find ourselves on the street. That said, every time this has happened, BME has stayed online and continued to run, almost entirely due to generous support from those who create BME through their images and stories. It’s very important to understand that the reason that BME has worked (or at least why I think it’s worked) is because of those people. BME isn’t a magazine with a mandate of its own to push — it seeks not only to be representative of the voice of the community, but to actually be created cooperatively by the community itself.

    As much as BME had tools for this community beforehand — a simple forum system, personal ads, and later even online “beauty pageants” — it’s really October 15th, 2000 that needs to be mentioned. The Net was already way into the blogging phenomenon, and I decided I’d like to have an online diary of my own. I put together a simple system for journals, and since it wasn’t really going to be much more work to do so, made it available for others to play with, posting the following message:


    October 15, 2000:  I am so tired! I probably shouldn’t tell you about it yet, but if you want to see what I’ve been working on, go to http://bme.com/iam/ -- Feel free to play with it if you want to, but do realize that we’re talking pre-Alpha stuff here and I’ve only completed about 25% of the programming. If you do play with it, and you experience “odd” behavior, please do tell me though.

    As had happened six years before with the main BME site, IAM quickly snowballed and a vibrant community was there within the week! I added features as quickly as I could and started tying parts of the IAM site and BME together. IAM went through a set of growing pains similar to BME and now continues as (I believe) the defining online body modification community (and a pretty nice piece of software as well).

    IAM has been able to provide a backbone of communication and introduction for people, and has helped catalyze tens of thousands of intense friendships, dozens of marriages (and some divorces) and now babies as well (including my own I suppose). In-person meets (echoing back to the rab munches of USENET) are common and from them suspension groups, bands, and more have sprouted. BME has grown from my little one-page website idea to a distributed empire given life by the ideas of hundreds of thousands of creators.

    Maybe I’m kidding myself and the reason for BME’s success is simply pictures of female genital piercing as I opined in December 1994, but speaking without misery it’s my opinion that the reason this growth happened is because BME was always run first as a devout offering to something we all believe in, and second as a business. BME’s stated goals are as follow:

    • To let people know they are not alone and to help them to understand who they are and what they are going through.
    • To provide a space allowing people to share their experiences with body modification and manipulation.
    • To politically and commercially encourage the ethical growth of body modification and manipulation.
    • To generate revenue and succeed as a traditional business, and to reinvest a part of these profits in body-related projects.
    • To educate the public about body modification and manipulation for the purposes of safety, history, culture, and good will.
    • When possible, to unify people interested in body modification and manipulation subjects.
    • To never judge one body modification or manipulation activity as more “right” than another and never succumb to public (mainstream or non-mainstream) pressure to draw this line.
    • To act as a media liaison to encourage accurate portrayals of body modification and manipulation and to encourage positive mainstream acceptance of body modification and manipulation activities.
    • To work with other body modification and manipulation groups to further our common goals.

    While I’ve left a lot out in this brief history — the creation of BMEshop, Uvatiarru (our movie), all the BMEbooks productions, legal fights, HUSTLER offering to buy BME, constant content theft, threats, ModCon, the Church of Body Modification, BME/Japan and much more — but that brings us basically up to date.

    Reflecting on Ten Years

    So… ten years of my life have been used on this project. I estimate I’ve spent at least 30,000 hours of time building and maintaining the site (and that’s my “lower limit” estimate). Was it worth it? Absolutely. As time has gone by I have become convinced of one thing:


    “We are right.”

    That is, the way that we live is the right way for us to be living (I make no claim that there aren’t other paths up the mountain, but for me, and many people reading this, this is the right path for us). The things we do and the things we document on BME, almost universally, are good, in the purest sense of the word. They bring us joy, they expand and enrich our lives and horizons, they help us view the universe through larger eyes, they feel good and make us feel good about ourselves, they teach us and they help us talk — and all without hurting anyone else. Yet millions of dollars in resources are dedicated to enacting laws to ban our practices and to ban us from even talking about them, and trillion-dollar corporations do everything they can to make operating businesses on the subject hellish. My wife and I even risk prosecution and imprisonment in countries close to our hearts due to being BME’s publishers.

    Why would the power players of modern society so resist the oldest form of human art and expression? It’s simple and disturbing: we are an affront to conformity, the conformity they need to maintain their power structure.

    Let’s be real clear on something. The average person is an idiot. So blank and malleable in fact that the stranger telling them for a few seconds what to do — or what to buy — will be heeded. Don’t believe me? Explain advertising. The simple fact that advertising exists is all the proof you need to know that the vast majority of people are sheep. If this were not true, advertising would be based exclusively on the comparative merits of the product, which we all know is not the case. It’s one of those “can’t see the forest for the trees” scenarios — because of the abundance of ads, most of us don’t see their real message revealing the pathetic nature of most humans.

    By definition, a person with piercings or tattoos — or who likes to shove a football up their rectum (damn near killed ’em!) — is breaking the rules and unable to believe that the status quo applies to them. The more they engage in body modification and play the more they realize that the status quo is a myth, that happiness really does come from within, and that life is what you make it — not what you pay someone else to make it. Thus we, the modified, are dangerous to them. It’s no lie that many of us have experimented with “risky behavior” as we are accused — because we don’t accept their rules. Because we want to know for ourselves. Because we desire to take an active role — or an active roll — in life.

    I could go on and on with statistics to prove it (and have done so on my IAM page), but one of the things that has been revealed within the last four years of political turmoil is how far removed the average person’s worldview is from reality. At this point not much over 10% of Americans believe in the concept of evolution any more, and polling has showed that adherence to these views are deeply linked to political allegiance — or, to put it another way, the average person believes what they’re told to believe, not what they observe or understand to be true. Not only that, but the average person not only does not want to discover the truth for themselves, but they become openly hostile when that truth is expressed to them, and violent if it is presented alongside difficult to refute evidence.

    People who “break the rules” by doing things like abnormally* modifying their physical form take a step toward rejecting this idealogical control structure. Because of this we have ridiculous and hypocritical laws restricting body modification,

    * Abnormal: Not typical, usual, or regular; not normal. Much greater than the normal; “abnormal profits”; “abnormal ambition”. Syn. Exceptional, Rare.
    Normal: Conforming with, adhering to, or constituting a norm, standard, pattern, level, or type. Syn. Routine, run-of-the-mill, obvious, mediocre.

    Below are a few photos of abnormal people attending some of the earlier BME BBQs:

    or pushing it back far enough into adulthood that it is less able to be a formative experience. Those at the upper end of the power structure do not want those below them realizing the power structure is illusory — so they combine a two pronged attack of restricting growth at the edges while dumbing down and bulk-marketing that which they can’t stop. Body modification and other fringe lifestyles are treated with a mix of derision, restrictive legislation, lampoonery, and finally watered-down price-slashed mainstreaming.

    Society is made up of 99% sheep, 0.9% goats, and 0.1% wolves. Before I get into that though, let me just rewind to the Janet Jackson nipple piercing fiasco and the other recent obscenity fines in America. What you may not know about these is that as much as obscenity is defined by “community standards”, only a handful of people actually find these materials obscene — in the $1.2 million dollar fine handed to FOX over Married by America, only three letters were written to the FCC complaining. Three.

    Maybe right now you’re asking yourself why FOX would accept the largest fine in broadcasting history for something that offended only three people out of millions of viewers (I’m quite certain that everything on TV offends at least three people). Simple answer — it was a $1.2 million campaign contribution to help convince Middle America that we — the freaks — were closing in on them. And it worked — they had a knee jerk reaction, called for “moral values”, and TV censorship is at an all time high in America, and liberties are being rolled back across the nation… including a reconsideration of whether tattooing and piercing should be legal — including even documenting it as on BME. Sometimes they do this with outright bans, but normally they do it with soft bans involving ridiculous and unfeasible health or zoning requirements. What’s happening is clear though — a tiny number of people are manipulating the group mind in order to suppress the vocal minority who aren’t connected to the enslaved and unquestioning Borg Collective paying the richest people in the world to stay rich.

     

    But getting back to animal land, it is the job of the goats to have fun, explore the borders, occasionally eat a tin can, and try and let the sheep know that just because “sheep” and “sheep herd” use the same spelling on their root word doesn’t mean that they’re conceptually the same thing. Sure, you’re a tribe member, but you’re also an individual. Then you’ve got the wolves, who live off the sheep. The job of the wolves is to keep the heard healthy but beat down enough to make easy victims, while killing any goat that gets too uppity.

    Speaking as a lunatic who buys this metaphor, I’d like to think that BME reminds the wolves that the goats actually enjoy kicking, don’t really mind if their lip gets pierced by that risky tin can, and point out to some of the sheep that if they’d like to take on the goat role, they’re perfectly welcome to do so. I’m looking forward to ten more years of kicking wolves, and partying with risk-enamored converted sheep and all my goat friends. If a wolf kills me, which is certainly quite likely, at least I’ve died honorably… but I’d like to keep telling everyone that it’s OK to break the rules because the rules are a myth. I’d like to keep telling people that any way you want to live is fine and the more doors inside yourself you want to open the better. I want to keep broadcasting everyone’s transformative stories so they can reach as many people as possible.

    Before I finish, I have one last — and most important — thing to say to everyone: Thank you for your help. I think we have done a good job together, and have expressed something wonderful. Here’s to ten (thousand) more.


    Shannon Larratt
    BME.com

  • Dealing with the Media [The Lizardman]

    Written by

    BME


    Dealing with the Media


    “The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish; the impressions remain flat and unconnected in the soul. Thus they are easily led by the opinions of others, are content to let their impressions be shuffled and rearranged and evaluated differently.”

    – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

    The media loves modified people. As a rule, we are visually interesting, provocative, and often present a curiosity to their consumers that has been proven to draw ratings. Shannon recently presented a request for guests he received from the Maury Show on his page and as a result of my comments to him about it he suggested I write a column on dealing with the media. The following is a great deal of personal experience over the last decade combined with the usual dose of my opinions. I am sure there are others here on BME that can greatly add to this and I hope they will via the forums. It is important that as a community we take advantage of the media as the positive tool it can be rather than being taken advantage of by the media.

    First, and most importantly, whether you are going to involve yourself with the media as a participant or just a consumer everyone should learn to look past the false glamour associated with media coverage. Appearing on TV, being interviewed on the radio, or whatever it may be is essentially meaningless. Take a look at your local paper and evening news and you will quickly see that a great deal of it is filler and that almost anyone and anything can end up there. Getting covered should not be seen as an end or achievement in itself. If you fall for this you play directly into the hands of those within the media who wish to exploit you and you very likely damage any cause you might have. Media coverage is a tool you can use but it is also a force that can easily use you.

    Always remember that the media has an agenda and a plan to achieve it. This is not to say that all media outlets and people are working on nefarious schemes but rather they quite simply do have something they are out to achieve and they will do so at your expense if necessary. Interviewing you or having you on as a guest is simply a method for them to achieve their goal. If you are going to deal with the media then you must also have an agenda and a plan. If you go in unprepared then it is most likely that you will get used and end up looking dumb, or in the best-case scenario you somehow get lucky and escape with your dignity intact but nothing or little gained. At a bare minimum, because it is a business, they will attempt to do as little as possible in terms of compensating you for your contributions.

    Never underestimate your importance to the media. As a guest or subject you represent the raw materials of their enterprise. Media is business. No one there is working for free and neither should you. Often, getting compensated for your time and work (and it is work) is as simple as asking. Most worthwhile productions realize that they need to pay and will do so when asked, but rarely offer up front and then lowball. The exception to this being many news programs, which don’t pay on the principle that it would impinge on their integrity. Personally, I don’t see a lot of merit in this claim for most stories but the value of advancing your agenda and getting your message out can be valuable enough to offset not getting paid. Of course, this assumes you have evaluated your ideas and goals and formulated a way to achieve them that uses the media coverage you can get.

    If you are going to deal with the media you have to do your research and plan your statements before you are recorded. Even very intelligent people often end up looking silly when hit up for ‘man on the street’ comments because they are not prepared for them. You should not only refresh your knowledge of your topic and ideas but also research the particular show or outlet you will be dealing with. Try to figure out their agenda and how you can either counter it or make it work for you.



    At the Don Francisco show, Miami 2002.

    Below I have broken down some practical tips and information about various forms of media. I strongly encourage anyone who is thinking about any involvement to consult with professionals whenever possible and if you are going to be doing it with any regularity a manager or lawyer are nearly a must because there is a lot to keep track of and having people who know the business help you is invaluable.

    PRINT  
    (newspapers, magazines, books and the like)

    Print media almost never pays and is mainly suitable for advancing information or advertising yourself or your business. The exception is for photos — read releases carefully and make sure that they only allow for use in connection with the relevant story or entry and that it is only for one story or edition. This insures that any use is legitimate in terms of what you expect and that future use will result in further compensation. In terms of content I prefer to do the interviews by email so that I have a written record of what I said in an unedited form. If the interview is recorded for transcription I request a copy of the recording. Most people will supply complimentary copies of the finished product but are often lazy or forgetful about doing it.

    RADIO

    Much like print, radio is almost always an unpaid gig. It is best suited for information and advertising. Most radio is live, which means you have to be on your toes and well prepared. Shows may be taped and edited for later rebroadcast, which means you should take care to not present them with anything they could easily manipulate if you think they may be hostile in any way. Very rarely will there be any contracts or releases involved unless they are also recording images for a website or something similar.

    TELEVISION

    News: As I mentioned above, news shows rarely offer pay but they can useful in that news coverage often increases the perceived legitimacy of your statements. I won’t go into the difference between public perception and truth here, but it is worth noting that if you say something on the news it will likely go further than something spouted off on a talk show and reaches a different audience. News appearances often come with short notice and because the particular show has a story they want to run. It is very important to discern the motivation and goal of the story and to be extremely well prepared. The news rarely uses releases.

    Talk Shows: Talk shows are probably the biggest offenders when it comes to claiming poverty and not paying guests. Many will try to draw people in with the promise of a free trip (hotel and airfare). This isn’t a horrible thing but the fact is that they do have a budget for guests and should at the very least be offering money for food as well. Initially, I generally tell them I want to paid AFTRA scale for the appearance. AFTRA is the American Federation of Television and Radio Actors and is similar to SAG (the Screen Actors Guild). They set minimum pay and rates for their members; this is what scale is — a minimum amount for a day’s work. You should also ask for residuals from future airings. This basically means that they agree to pay you a percentage of the original amount each time they air the episode again after the first time — with shows like Maury or Ricki Lake this can add up quickly. If they continue to balk about payment you can also suggest they pay you the day rate you would receive at your regular job since it is likely you will be missing some work to travel and appear. Sometimes they will take to this better and even news programs will sometimes go for this. In the end, don’t be afraid to stonewall — losing the appearance is not the end of the world. Check releases carefully and get help reading them through if necessary.

    Domestic Cable (HBO original programs, Discovery, National Geographic, and so on): These programs have widely varying budgets but there is always money there for you — it is just a matter of how much. These shows pay to fly crews and equipment around the world, and there is no reason for you to put in the work (and these are usually the most work and disruptive to your usual life) without being compensated. This is where having an agent or manager really helps. Yes, they take a percentage but they often get you more than you would have on your own which makes up for their cut. It is very hard to get residuals from cable networks though, but worth trying — don’t let it be a deal breaker in their case.

    International TV: For Americans, foreign television provides some of the most lucrative opportunities. Residuals are almost never there but the up front money is often much better. Again, an agent is very helpful. Many of these outlets pay people to find and shoot the stories and they let them keep the money in the budget that they don’t pay you. A good agent will know the current budget levels for these organizations and get you all you can.

    I haven’t mentioned things like variety shows for performers or acting appearances because if you are going to do this then you really should be working with a professional to handle things. Hopefully this helps someone and don’t be afraid to ask me or anyone questions.




    Erik Sprague

    because the world NEEDS freaks…

    Former doctoral candidate and philosophy degree holder Erik Sprague, the Lizardman (iam), is known around the world for his amazing transformation from man to lizard as well as his modern sideshow performance art. Need I say more?

    Copyright © 2004 BMEzine.com LLC. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published November 27th, 2004 by BMEzine.com LLC in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.


  • Be Careful. You Have Enemies. [The Publisher’s Ring]

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt


    Be Careful. You Have Enemies.


    “Trust not him that hath once broken faith; he who betrayed thee once, will betray thee again.”

    – Shakespeare

    In this column I’d like to give you a behind-the-scenes look at some of the things body modification artists and studios have to deal with that clients may not be aware of, and that younger artists may still need a warning about. It’s very easy for us to get a false impression of the world because of the crowds of mod-friendly people who characterize BME members, but the world in general is far from so accepting a place. You all know about how this restricts our lifestyles on a surface level, but what you may not be aware of is that these sometimes prejudicial laws are also a tool for profit and business manipulation.

    There are a lot of people who’d like to see the body modification industry go away or at least be under heavy regulation. Some feel this way for moralistic reasons, and others, such as those in government health agencies, are simply trying to do what they believe is in the best interests of public safety. Then there are those in competition, such as ear piercing gun manufacturers (or even just competing studios), who want piercing to be popular, but are motivated to keep financial traffic away from certain studios so they can drive as much of it as possible to their own establishments. What the industry needs to understand is that these people aren’t going to fight you by firebombing your shop — they’re going to play the system into shutting you down.




    Luckily, these Police officers are modification friendly. (photo: CJ)

    In order to play the system against you, they (whoever “they” may be) need to find a place that you come into conflict with the law. Most obviously this can involve finding (or sometimes fabricating) procedures that may not be entirely legal; tongue splitting, scarification, suspension, or other health code or criminal violation. If the assault is from outside the industry the outsiders tend to be easy to recognize at least.


    Hey Shannon,

        Hate to bug you but this has come to my attention over the last couple of weeks through **** ***** and ***** at ***** **** Tattoos. Over the last week there have been a large number of people calling us and other shops saying they are looking to have their tongues split. What is odd is these are not heavily modded people, or even slightly "in the know" of the industry. As we all know, if you really want this done, you probably have a general idea of who to contact and/or you are at least well acquainted with your piercer because you probably would have some other work. These are so called "normal" people with no mods and they are all doing it by phone call only. We have had even one request come from an underage kid whose parent's had allegedly agreed to sign for him to have this done. These requests are flooding into our shop, through call-ins, other shops like ****, and ***** **** Tattoos, which causes me to believe that a possible investigation is happening in Ontario right now for body art practitioners that "cross the line."

    We of course deny any and all knowledge/involvement and urge others to do the same. Just a heads up.

    *****

    In “the old days,” those doing procedures that were gray or overtly illegal operated by word of mouth, accepted new clients only when they were referred by an existing client, and certainly never advertised or talked to reporters — even photos sent to private insider publications like BME or BCQ were sent through anonymous email accounts with no names attached. When it comes to procedures like tongue splitting, practitioners should consider the wisdom of their predecessors’ discretion.

    Sometimes though it’s not so easy to identify one’s enemy. Since piercing is a business, and there are now people who make their living at it, sometimes those people get carried away with fighting their competition. I’m reminded of a well known Chicago piercer, ***** ***** who conspired with the Health Board to have his competition shut down, which eventually lead to the death of a number of America’s first studios. By managing to convince the Health Board that he was their lone ally, even though he was piercing out of a tiny single room studio in the back of a clothing shop without even a separate sterilization room, he was able to dramatically increase his income and reputation — but at what cost?

    Later the Health Board in the same region put a ban on suspension performances. Seeing another opportunity, this piercer attempted to “rat” on any competing shop who he felt was involved in BME BBQs or other events that might legally cross the line. It boggles my mind that someone who did “legally questionable” procedures themselves as well as suspensions would choose attempting to initiate prosecution of others for those activities as their line of attack, but ***** ***** is far from the only piercer I’ve seen try and convince the government to go after his competition, the whole time professing to be doing “the right thing”.

    Others, like Canada’s **** *****, genuinely believe that instituting a conservative piercing industry is the right decision. One part civic duty, and one part — and much larger part — shameless self promotion, ***** keeps himself in the public eye with body piercing world record attempts and rabid promotion of body modification safety. An apparent career nomad, as he moves into a new region, piercing shops in the area start to feel heat due to his actions.


    I work at a shop here in ***** called ********. The owner, **** *******, has been trying to get a proper body art bylaw instated here for approximately seven years. As of about a month ago, '****', or ***** ****** as I know him mostly, popped up and started trying to get the bylaw proposal thrown out with all sorts of ludicrous allegations. He wants to make scarification type mods illegal, and has been a thorn in our side since the first day we met him. We don't want to make anything illegal, and that is not what **** has been working for, for so long. We simply want to have, at the least, a minimum standard, and people checking up on the industry to make sure things are being done properly. '****' is a media hound, and will do anything, or say anything, to get himself some attention. He even went so far as to generate fictitious death threats, allegedly from our shop, in a hope that the police that showed up today would arrest my boss, so that he couldn't speak, in support, at the final council meeting tomorrow.

    I enjoy being able to submit photos of my mods, but with him on the site, I think that I will have to be more selective about what BME gets to see.

    ****** ****

    Later this same piercer decided that BME was a part of the problem, and began “harvesting” the site for any photos or stories that he felt could do damage to competing businesses. He even went so far as to phone in fake complaints to the police when BME events were being held in an effort to make life unpleasant for the members of the site in return for them not helping him shut down his competition.





    Police, called to investigate a suspension party, instead reveal their sense of humor. (photo: CJ)

    While regulatory and internal attacks are the most common, as I mentioned earlier, the ear piercing gun industry is another source of grief. The gun lobby has already managed to silence through threat of lawsuit many of the people who spoke out against them, but now that government health agencies are starting to regulate in response to the dangers of piercing guns, manufacturers are beginning to target piercing studios themselves. I believe this is in an effort to convince the government that studios are “even worse” than piercing guns.

    Hi Shannon,

    I just wanted to give you a “head’s up” about the “Ear Piercing Manufacturers *** ** **** ******” ‘s president – **** *****. You may have already heard of this jewelry salesmen / lawyer. He has harassed the APP and several other organizations related to personal services. He individually approaches health units and tries to convince them that the Ministry of Health has allowed ear piercing guns to be used on cartilage, etc. (assorted lies). He has a big surprise coming when the revised PSSP comes out.

    Anyway, I just received a package from his office in **** with pictures from your site (Sprocket in Stratford, etc.) where he is actually looking for health violations and reporting them to me (piercing without gloves, etc.). I am sure that he has already forwarded his information to the Health Unit in Perth. He has managed to get himself into meetings at the Ministry of Health in Toronto, and was actually *** ** *** ****** **** **** ***** *** ******** Health Canada’s version of the PSSP.

    Have a great day,

    *********

    The point of all this is that there are always people who can profit from your loss, so there will always be people who will use any dirty trick they can to try and cause you to lose. Above are only a very small number of the attacks I hear about weekly. Most of them come from those who seek financial gain, and others come from moralists and theocrats, but whatever the source, the preparations and defenses required are the same.

    A few basic rules:

    1. Be a professional, be safe, and have high standards in all things.
    2. Be polite to the authorities and the system, but know your rights, and know where their rights end, and don’t be afraid to assert either.
    3. Don’t say anything online in a public or semi-public forum that you wouldn’t feel comfortable telling your local newspaper and your competition.
    4. If a procedure is not explicitly legal, don’t charge for it and don’t do it on people you don’t know and trust.
    5. If part of a procedure such as the use of anesthetics is not explicitly legal, don’t publish photos of it or have the clients write about it in a way that links back to you.
    6. Don’t talk to strangers about the procedures, and don’t become a braggart. Boasting about procedures is as likely to cause you grief as it is fame.
    7. If you decide to do an interview with the media, don’t be afraid to say “no comment”. Reporters aren’t your friends — they have a goal that’s distinct from your own, and what’s a “good story” for them is not necessarily the one that’s in your best interests.

    These things should be common sense. Laws are in flux, and it’s not always clear what’s permitted and what’s not, and where the lines are going to be drawn, and even with clearly defined laws, they can still be used as a tool to negatively affect the lives of others. While I certainly encourage people to share their experiences on BME, I also urge people to be prudent in selecting which ones should be shared anonymously. Remember that as much as you have friends watching you, you also have enemies watching you.


    Shannon Larratt
    BME.com

  • Fighting Back: Enforcing Tattoo Copyright [Legal Link]

    Written by

    BME


    Fighting Back: Enforcing Tattoo Copyright


    “I, Robert Barnard, CEO of Digital Storm Group did not intentionally try to harm or offend anyone in the tattoo industry. I thought I was helping the public make an informed choice on the pros and cons of the tattoo industry. Please accept my heartfelt apology and I have shut down my shocking tattoo website and ebook indefinably.”

    Robert Barnard violated the copyright of Calypso Tattoo’s Daniel DiMattia by willfully and unlawfully publishing an image of the artist’s work without permission in a commercial text that disparages the tattoo community as a whole. In exchange for not pursuing the violation in court, Barnard ceased publication of his e-book, redirected the web sites for his tattoo and body piercing e-books, paid $1,000 USD to the artist, and wrote the apology above.

    This article is about not sitting back and letting people take advantage of body modification artists and enthusiasts.

    It shows that we can fight back and win.

    Robert Barnard is the author of the e-books “Shocking Tattoo Secrets Revealed” and “Body Piercing Revealed,” as well as other classics such as “Ferrets Revealed” and “Bipolar Exposed.” Cliché riddled, error filled, and abound with misstatements are often descriptions for self-published e-books, and “Shocking Tattoo Secrets Revealed” is no exception. An example of Barnard’s wit and wisdom on the “secretive world of tattoos” is that “occassionally” you can get AIDS from tattoo needles. Evidently, he knows something the US Center for Disease Control does not, as they have never found a case of AIDS transmitted through tattooing. He also warns women that a tattoo may look sexy on their perky young breasts — he uses the word “perky” twice in one thought — but that it won’t be sexy anymore when their boobs start to sag. I can hear the gasps of young women resonating across the Internet with this startling new information. Shocking secret, indeed.

    My favorite clichés of Barnard’s are about the reasons why people get tattoos: to please a lover, to be in a gang, and to be a “freespirit.” Oh, but freespirits be warned, “what happens when you grow up a little bit and want to go to work in that law firm and they won’t hire you because of that free spirit tattoo.”

    Perhaps it’s because Barnard never imagined the existence of tattooed lawyers that he flagrantly violated copyright laws by stealing images of tattoos to illustrate his text.

    Perhaps it’s because he didn’t think that anyone in the modified community is smart enough to understand basic principles of law, that is, because we’re all out getting our gang symbols etched into our skin.

    Perhaps it’s because he didn’t realize that one of the tattoo photos he stole might belong to a tattooist whose partner is a lawyer who wrote, “The Tattoo Copyright Controversy” discussing ways tattooists can protect themselves from the very violations Barnard committed. As one friend put, “This idiot fucked with the wrong freaks!”

    Yes, he did. And Barnard finally realized it when he received my email threatening suit.

    When I wrote the article for BME on copyrighting tattoos, I got a lot of flack: “The tattoo community doesn’t need lawyers treading on it” or “Let tattooists deal with design theft their own way” or “Karma not courts.” However, my article never took a position either way — I just said suing for copyright infringement was an option, take it or leave it.

    A few months after the article came out, I was forced to take a position. A “tattooist” had inked a bad copy of a large portion of my custom backpiece — identically. I was pissed off, hurt, and wanted to physically ensure this guy would never tattoo again. But I chose not to sue. Or break his hands. Eventually, Karma won out and the tattooist’s shop had closed down.

    I was faced with the decision once again on Monday, October 25th. While checking my email fifteen times a minute, I came across a Google Alert for the keyword tattoo with the title “Is it safe to get a tattoo?” I clicked the link and was directed to a press release for “Shocking Tattoo Secrets Revealed,” which warned that getting a tattoo can be a “life or death” decision and the best way to avoid dying would be to buy this book. Being known for my joie de vivre, I bought it.

    Page one of Shocking Tattoo Secrets is a mock-up image of a real book made of paper, an aspirational jpeg for an author yearning to be on the shelves of Border’s Staff Picks. The real irony begins on page two with the author’s copyright notice asking those who did not buy the book directly from the web site to notify the author and they will be rewarded “handsomely” for outing the thief once legal action has been taken.

    I scrolled through the pages wincing in pain at the banal cut-and-paste prose that anyone can find on a tattoo web site, with none of the facts and figures he actually gets right attributed to the source.

    Then, after suffering through some cheesy clip-art, the images of the tattoos began, one to accompany each body part. None of the images credited the work to the artist or wearer, but many were familiar to me. In the ribs section, I saw a beautiful Japanese piece by New York artist Mike Rubendale, which I knew well. For the backpiece section (a two-sentence paragraph), I recognized the work of Seven Sins Tattoo in the UK. And for the feet … there was the work of Daniel DiMattia of Calypso Tattoo. Not only do I know Daniel’s work well, I know his shoe size, how he likes his coffee in the morning, whether he leaves the toilet seat up or down — all things couples know. But I am not only his partner, I am his lawyer and I know that he did not authorize use of that image to Barnard or anyone connected to his e-books. I also knew his client did not authorize the image.

       

    “Didn’t they outlaw torture in the Geneva convention?”
    Original work by Daniel DiMattia.

    The only other person who could have legally authorized the use of the image is Shannon Larratt who owns the copyright to images that are submitted and posted on BME where much of Daniel’s work can be found. It clearly states on the web site that under no circumstances may BME photos be republished on the Internet or offline unless permission is granted. There was also another tattoo image used in which Barnard forgot to photoshop out the BME logo. So I asked Shannon if he granted permission (never imagining he would) to Shocking Tattoo Secrets Revealed and he said no, offering to help in any lawsuit I pursued. He also pointed me to Barnard’s other site http://www.bodypiercingrevealed.com/.


    Oops! Criminal mastermind Bobby B. forgot to cover his tracks.

    When deciding to pursue any kind of legal action, you have to stop and think: Is this worth it? Court cases, if not settled quickly, take up a lot of time and money and there’s hardly ever a guarantee that you’ll come out better for it. So I started digging into who is Robert Barnard. Maybe he was a fan of Calypso Tattoo and that’s why he used the image.

    Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Out of curiosity I did a Google image search for “feet tattoo” and there on the very first page of the search results was the image of Daniel’s work. Then I did a search for “rib tattoo” and Mike’s work came up. Thigh, stomach, legs — the images used in the e-book all appear on the very first page of their respective image search. Barnard didn’t even have the drive to look further than what was immediately presented to illustrate his “work.”

    For the sheer reason of his sloth, I decided I was gonna sue. If someone wants to cast aspersions on the body mod community, as many do, at least they should put a little gusto into it. It should never be that easy to undermine artists’ creations and livelihood through gross errors, stale rhetoric, and even illegally using their art against them.

    So I sent this email:

    From: Marisa Kakoulas
    To: Robert Barnard
    Subject: Shocking Tattoo Secrets -- COPYRIGHT VIOLATION
    Date: Oct 26, 2004

    Dear Mr. Barnard,

    I just purchased "Shocking Tattoo Secrets Revealed" and found that you unlawfully and willfully used an image of a tattoo by my partner, Daniel DiMattia, in your e-book. I also know that you did not receive permission from the owner of the tattoo to use the image.

    I am an attorney and author of the article "Tattoo Copyright Controversy"
    https://www.bmezine.com/news/guest/20031208.html. Please read my copyright article -- particularly the damages section -- and contact me immediately so that we may reach an amicable settlement.

    I am also in contact with people whose images you have used in your book as well.I will refrain from contacting them until I have heard from you. If you wish, you may have your attorneys contact me via this email address.

    Thank you.

    Marisa Kakoulas

    Barnard replied in minutes saying he was just a hobbyist and didn’t mean any harm and that he would remove the image of the foot tattoo from the e-book.

    I took time and read the book thoroughly. In the paragraph under the photo of Dan’s work was a description of getting a foot tattoo: “Didn’t they outlaw torture in the Geneva convention?” In his section on genital tattoos, Barnard says that it “makes him cringe.” Under the photo of the vivacious Isobel Varley, the most senior tattooed woman in the world, his caption of her reads, “Do you think this woman has a little too much time on her hands?” Reading the toxic tone of his writing, I didn’t buy the “didn’t mean any harm” argument, so I wrote back saying that I wanted to speak directly with his attorneys. If he wanted to settle the matter on his own, here were the terms:

    1. Cease publication entirely.
    2. Draft an apology to those your book has offended.
    3. As compensation for harm caused, I set the amount for $1,000 USD, which encompassed the cost of the tattoo and my time spent on the matter. (I didn’t ask to be reimbursed for the $13 I spent on his book.)

    I then told him that if it goes to court I may pursue a joint or class action with other artists whose copyright he violated.

    Two hours later, I received a transfer of $1,000, a short apology, and the tattoo and body secrets web sites were redirected. Barnard also vowed not to publish anything tattoo related.

    To Barnard’s credit, he handled things smart and quickly. I was itching to try a test case for tattoo copyright in the courts. But he explained he’s just a one-man show and has a family to feed. I told him that Daniel has a son to feed as well and that a book that fear-mongers against tattoos interferes with his ability to do so.

    Barnard then thanked me for giving him the artist’s side of the story. And then asked me to leave him alone.

    I’m leaving him alone. While Barnard has made money off of reviling body art, he’s not a mega-corporation with the marketing ability to affect the minds of many. He really isn’t the ideal test case.

    But his story is a good example of how the modified community can fight back against those that violate our rights. I can almost guarantee he won’t mess with us again.

    Marisa Kakoulas

    This article was not intended as legal advice. It is intended for only general information purposes. This article does not create any attorney-client relationship.


    Marisa Kakoulas
    Marisa Kakoulas is a New York lawyer, writer, and muse of Daniel DiMattia of Calypso Tattoo, living in Liege, Belgium. She works undercover — or just covered up — as a corporate consultant: proof that tattoos and suits are not mutually exclusive. Her book “Tattoo Law”, an overview of US laws affecting the body modification community, is under way. IAM members can visit Marisa at iam:FREE.

    Copyright © 2004 Marisa Kakoulas. Online presentation copyright © 2004 Shannon Larratt and BMEzine.com. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published online November 10th, 2004 by BMEZINE.COM in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

  • BME commentary on PA House Bill No. 615 [The Publisher’s Ring]

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt


    BME commentary on
    PA House Bill No. 615
    The Tattoo, Body-Piercing and Corrective Cosmetic Artists Act


    “There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws.”

    – Ayn Rand

       

    If you’d like to read the bills in their entirety, I’ve archived full PDF copies of the bills, up-to-date as of the writing of this article (November 9th, 2004).

        H-832 (passed)
        H-615 (pending)

    Earlier this year Tony DeLuca and others introduced several pieces of legislation to regulate piercing and tattooing in Pennsylvania. House Bill 832, which requires parental consent and presence for the tattooing and piercing of minors, passed earlier this year, albeit with a typically unrelated Senate amendment also banning greyhound racing. The second and much longer bill, House Bill 615, has passed the House and is currently in the Senate’s Health and Welfare committee.

    It’s not so much that the bill is bad, but that’s it’s just typical government. In its errors and poorly considered drafting it illustrates the truth of the motto, “that government which governs best, governs least.” Like far too much modern legislation, the public would be best served if tax money was not wasted developing and enforcing this new law. The bill is ineptly written, and like most government actions, is beholden to special interests and lobbyists, as becomes clear when we begin with the definitions section.


    “Body piercing.” The process of breaching the skin or mucous membrane for the purpose of insertion of any object, including, but not limited to, jewelry for cosmetic purposes. The term does not include ear piercing or nail piercing.

    The disclaimer that “ear piercing” isn’t covered by this piercing bill is fairly normal due to the insidious lobbying power of the ear piercing gun industry. However, the instant we read a line that’s clearly fraudulent — can we seriously be proposing that an ear piercing is fundamentally different on a biological level than, say, a nostril ring? — we can be certain that the entirety of the bill is tainted.

    The definitions section goes on to define “corrective cosmetic artist” (another group with lobbyists) as something separate from just a tattoo artist. Tattoo artists tend to get started after a year or more of apprenticeship and careful guidance from an experienced mentor. “Cosmetic” tattoo artists on the other hand are often nothing more than estheticians with a week’s training (buy now, and it’s included in the price of the equipment!) — much of the cosmetic tattoo industry is akin to artists who buy a “tattoo kit” out of the back of a lower end tattoo magazine and learn to tattoo from the included videotaped instructions. But I digress…

    The bill also talks about safety regulations, registration and accounting processes, but leaves them open-ended, saying that the Department of Health will still have to define them. It is difficult to fully comment on the validity and benefits or lack thereof with a law whose heart reads “to be announced.”

    But let’s not get disheartened too quickly. The bill has an interesting limitation put on it.


    (f) Limitation.--Nothing in this act shall be construed to permit the department to regulate artistic aspects of tattooing, body piercing or corrective cosmetics which are unrelated to health, sanitation, sterilization or safety standards.

    Sounds good, right? Unfortunately it’s a typically hypocritical statement, since we’ve already read that the bill is imposing artistic limitations by giving special status to ear piercing, exempting it from the regulations. Even if you use a spring loaded altar for bacteria to rip a hole in your lobe rather than an autoclaved needle, it’s still body piercing, and it still carries the same family of risks, if not more.

    The bill goes on to list some unusual requirements and restrictions for the artists themselves — “minimum health standards”. I believe that most of these are well-intentioned, but in reality are somewhat nonsensical. Infectious diseases are taken very seriously by the bill, as they should be, but the ideas are misapplied.


    (b) Infectious diseases.--A notarized statement from a licensed physician shall be provided to this department... confirming that the artist was examined by the physician, a test of the artist’s blood was made and the results of that test indicate that:

        (1) the artist is free from all contagious and infectious diseases, including hepatitis B;

    That sounds great, I know, but it’s basically irrelevant. Under no normal circumstances is the client at risk from the piercer’s blood — the risk is entirely the other way around. Diseases like this require blood to blood contact, and while a studio that doesn’t control contamination issues could pass blood between subsequent clients, or a clumsy piercer could have a needlestick injury pass blood from client to piercer, there is no reasonable way for blood to pass from piercer to client. This bill is incompetently written by people who do not understand the issues involved. Especially in the case of government and law enforcement, comprehension must come before legislation, and that is not happening here.

    The bill also requires that aftercare instructions be given. Of course I support that, but the bill steps in to make an unusual footnote.


    The written instructions shall advise the customer to consult a physician at the first sign of infection and contain the name, address and phone number of the tattoo or body-piercing establishment.

    Yeah, and next time I run out of gas in my car, I’m going to call a metallurgist. First of all, most of the time someone thinks their piercing is infected, it’s not. Second of all, doctors have far less experience with body piercing and tattoos than those who actually work with them every day. This clause will have two results: it will generate increased income for doctors, and I believe that, if the instructions are heeded by the client, it will result in a lower standard of care due to doctors’ inexperience with body piercing.

    Some interesting social restrictions are placed as well.


    (a) Unregistered practice.--It is unlawful for any person to ... assume the title of “tattooist,” “tattoo artist,” “body-piercer,” “body-piercing artist,” “corrective cosmetics artist” or other letters or titles in connection with that person’s name which in any way represents himself as being engaged in the practice of tattooing, body piercing, or corrective cosmetics, or authorized to do so, unless that person has been duly registered and authorized to engage in the practice under this act.

    So, basically, the government is taking ownership over these titles as restricted professional terms (just like a normal person can’t call themselves a doctor). Outside of the fact that tattooing and piercing are arguably folk professions a la pottery or dowsing that can’t rightly be treated as “titled” professions, can we seriously expect a government agency that has already shown incompetence in its understanding of this industry to assign such titles?


    ...the department may suspect or revoke any registration issued under this act for any of the following reasons:
        (3) Being unable to practice with reasonable skill and safety to the public by reason of illness, addiction to drugs or alcohol, having been convicted of a felonious act prohibited by... The Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act, or convicted of a felony relating to a controlled substance...

    This clause again shows the sociopolitical bias inside this bill, as the US government’s misguided “War on Drugs” perverts another law. Someone having a past conviction for drug dealing seems to me less worrying than someone having committed murder in the past — this bill bans the reformed marijuana user from being a tattoo artist, yet openly invites the convicted murdering rapist pedophile to pierce teen genitals. This entire clause should be removed. It’s irrelevant to the professional issues involved and the safety of the client.


        (5) Knowingly maintaining a(n)... association with any person who is in violation of this act or regulation of the department or knowingly aiding, assisting, procuring or advising any unregistered person to practice a profession contrary to this act or regulations of this department.

    Guilt by association? You can’t talk to anyone who they don’t like? These are starting to read like parole restrictions. Read broadly, this clause could ban apprenticeships, ban attending tattoo conventions, and certainly ban discussions with online friends of various levels. It’s wrong to punish someone because of who they know.


    Not in Pennsylvania!

    Larry Leopard and Ron Garza prepare to devour a willing plain-faced virgin.

    Finally, there’s one restriction that goes way too far.


        (d) Facial tattoos.--It is unlawful for any person other than a corrective cosmetic artist registered under this act, or a physician or surgeon licensed in this Commonwealth, to perform facial tattoo services on any other person.

    Didn’t the bill start off by saying that no restrictions would be placed on the art? Only on the safety issues? Clearly restricting tattooing to only certain parts of the body is entirely motivated by cultural reasoning, not by safety concerns. The inclusion of this restriction effectively reduces the bill to nonsense. Allowing permanent makeup to be tattooed — where society chooses the artwork by seeking out this year’s “normal” — but banning art chosen by the wearer as an individual, is clearly contrary to not only the declared purpose of the bill, but to free speech and expression in general.


    “We won’t restrict your artwork, as long as you only produce the art we permit.”

    It’s a dangerous thing when a government deludes itself into thinking that it has the right — or duty — to decide what forms of expression its citizens use. Telling artists not only what they’re allowed to say, but also who they’re allowed to say it to, who they’re allowed to discuss their art with, and placing them under nebulous regulations has never been healthy for either art or for the culturally starved society that enacts these laws.

    So what to do? While I could be wrong, I don’t believe that the authors of this bill are overtly opposed to body modification or are trying to legalize cultural bigotry. It’s simply well-meaning but incompetent and misguided bureaucracy at work, and the best we can do as citizens is first to try and inform the legislative branches of our society to not pass ill-advised laws, and to reform those that already have passed. Barring that, we are left with civil disobedience, a path which is as strewn with hardship as it is with honor.

    This bill is just the tip of the iceberg. The political process does not start and end on election day. As a citizen, you have more responsibility than just voting — you have to stay informed as to what your elected representatives are doing, and you need to communicate with them about your wishes. You can bet that the ear piercing industry is doing so, and because of their efforts, the law skips over them. People have the same opportunity. You need to call or write your government representative and let them know the wishes of their constituents, and that applies to everyone in the world, not just to residents of Pennsylvania.


    Shannon Larratt
    BME.com