BME: Body Modification Ezine

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

Celebrating body modification culture since 1994.

Category: Editorial

  • Thesis Requests

    Written by

    Rachel

    Just a quick post to help a couple members of the community. Just as I normally get a lot of media requests and post those, these are geared more towards higher education and helping specific members of the community with their degrees!

    Hi, my name is Alisha Gauvreau and I am a fourth-year Anthropology student at Laurentian University. As an anthropologist, I study human variation and adaptation, both currently and through time. I also study the central concept of anthropology, which is culture. Culture consists of all behaviour which is learned and transmitted to new members of a group.

    As a member of the body modification community, I have always been fascinated by our culture and the various rituals practiced by many members of this important community. Of particular interest is the practice of body suspension and I have had the opportunity to observe suspensions and flesh pulls. Although there is historic information about body suspension among the Mandan and Lakota First Nations people in North America, I have yet to find any academic documentation about this practice in contemporary North America. Thus, I decided to document it.

    For my fourth-year university thesis, I am studying suspension as practiced by members of the body modification community in Canada. The primary purposes of this research are:

    • Documentation of the subculture of body suspension in Canada.
    • Documentation of the ritual aspects of body suspension.
    • Documentation of the physiological and psychological aspects of body suspension.
    • Education of medical practitioners about the physiological and psychological effects of body suspension.
    • A cross cultural comparison of body suspension in Canada with other groups who have been documented to practice body suspension — for example, the Mandan and Dakota people of North America.
    • Education of the general public about body suspension.
    • Helping to eliminate misconceptions and ethnocentric viewpoints about body suspension.
    • Practical applications for the health care community and for other public agencies.

    I am currently recruiting individuals who are interested in being interviewed about their perspectives and experiences with respect to body suspension. If you are thinking about suspending, have suspended only once, or have suspended numerous times, then you are eligible to participate in this important research. I have transportation and am willing to travel so I can conduct face-to-face interviews. Telephone interviews are also an option. Participation in my research is entirely voluntary and all data is kept confidential. If you chose to participate, we will both sign a form agreeing to the aforementioned terms. Permission forms for telephone interviews will be handled by fax.

    If you are interested in participating please contact me at: [email protected]

    Alisha and her friend, Ivan.

    The second one comes from another student working on her thesis as well. She’s created an online survey but did not include a photo of herself for me to run some Photoshop filters on and water mark.

    “I want to hear your story!

    I’m a graduate student with the UCCS sociology department and I’m working on my masters thesis on non-mainstream body modification.

    That’s where you come in! (In other words, I need fabulous bodies to study!)

    I’m particularly interested in hearing from those of you with “extreme” body modifications/practices, but Mods of all sorts are welcome to participate, of course.

    If you’re interested in helping me out please follow this link to take the survey (easier than a DIY job during a 3am power outage, right?)

    Tell me your body’s story!

    If you have questions, please contact me at [email protected].

    Thank you!”

    Morgen

    If you’ve got the time, please take a moment to help out!

  • Facebook blocks BME

    Written by

    Rachel

    Earlier today I attempted to post to the BME group on Facebook. I generally share links to BME articles on both Myspace and Facebook. At first I was getting “no title” errors. I then tried to post the link via the “share” utility on Facebook to post it on my wall. It became clear then that Facebook deemed BMEzine.com an unfit URL to publish or even mentioned on their site..

    Shortly after I posted on IAM, with a screenshot of the error that I was getting. Several other users mentioned they received both these messages when trying to add the URL to their profile, interests or sending the link to a friend on Facebook. Previously entered URLs remain unaffected.

    “Some of the information you entered is not allowed on Facebook. Please try again.”

    “Warning: This Message Contains Blocked Content. Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users.”

    I’ve already sent a few emails as well as made some calls to a few friends to see what can be done about it. One thing I know that works is getting users to speak out!

    Select the following text and copy it, click the image below it to take you to their contact form, choose “other” and paste the text into the description box, click submit!

    To whom it may concern..

    It has come to my attention that Facebook has tagged www.BMEzine.com as a site that contains “abusive content” and all mention of the URL has been prohibited on Facebook.

    This allegation is utterly untrue and I feel that on further investigation this decision should be overturned. BMEzine.com has been online for over a decade and is the largest online community site that documents body modification and ritual aspects of the body modifications culture.

    Please look into this further and allow BME to continue their relationship with Facebook.

    Thank you for your time.

    Thank you for taking the time to write to Facebook. If they don’t think any of their users care about BME, they won’t remove the block.

  • BMXnet Conference

    Written by

    Rachel

    Where in the world is BME?

    BMXnet is hosting it’s second annual conference to bring together artists from the body modification community from around the world. Registration closed last week but there are a few seats still available for last minute pre-registration. You can pay upon arrival. For more information, check out the article from the 2007 convention.

    Logo by Goran

  • 7th Annual Oslo Suspension Convention

    Written by

    Rachel

    For the seventh year in a row, Wings Of Desire brings us their Oslo SusCon. Håvve Fjell and Christiane Löfblad facilitate suspensions for a growing number of individuals each year, and are setting new records each year for their event — both in the sheer number of participants and suspensions, as well as the nations represented at their convention. The 80-plus attendees hail from 14 different countries around the globe, with an astonishing 67 suspensions predicted.

    Photo Courtesy Helene FjellPhoto courtesy Helene Fjell

    Photo courtesy Helene FjellPhoto courtesy Helene Fjell

    Photos courtesy Helene Fjell

    In addition to providing access to suspensions themselves, WoD conducts workshops to encourage the development of safe suspension practices in a friendly environment. WoD has given their workshops in Norway, Sweden, Poland, Brazil and Italy, and works closely with the annual Italian SusCon.

    The SusCon runs from July 18-20, with a BBQ/afterparty on July 21. It’s an honor to be invited to participate at the upcoming convention and I look forward to seeing you there!


  • Letter From the Editor (July 11)

    Written by

    Rachel

    Oh, hello! And welcome to the brand new BME News!

    After years of the old news design (which is still there as an archive for the time being until we can transfer everything over), I thought it was time for a change. I don’t know about you, but I’m a fan. Look at it! It’s so clean! It’s still got that new blog smell! Big thanks to Jonathon and Jordan for putting this together.

    As you can see, the launch of BME News means changes in some other areas — most notably, the end of the old ModBlog. But ModBlog isn’t gone — it’s now integrated into BME News, which makes sense, and is more convenient than having to juggle several different URLs to access all of BME’s content. (Now you only need to juggle a couple!) As well, the ModBlog archives aren’t here yet, but they are most certainly on their way, so hold tight on that one.

    Please note: Comments on Modblog are disabled to allow the entries to be migrated without the loss of new comments. Once the old entries are imported, the template will be updated to allow browsing of the “new” modblog in a similar format as the old one. You will not have to click through to each link.

    We’ve got a lot of exciting additions on the way, including a weekly (hopefully) advice column from David Vidra, the return of Shawn Porter to BME’s editorial team, and some other surprises that we’ll ideally be able to unveil soon. At the moment, though, everything you see on this page at the moment is 100 per cent new, and updates should be coming soon and often.

    If you run into technical issues, please, let us know via e-mail or in the comments. Other than that, enjoy all the new content, and I’ll check back in soon!

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