Why do people get such piercings and tattoos?

tattoo's and piercings have become a status symbol in america (just like harley davidson motorcycles), how many ppl do you know that do NOT have any piercings or tattoo's ( i am one)

 

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I have a high IQ. I was still expected to treat myself as an undistinguished loser.

Because I wasn't cool. I wasn't socially cock of the walk, versed in every damn rule of the bitch pack - I won't say wolf pack, because wolves are dignified and beautiful creatures. I couldn't say that of mainstream teen girls. I was that weird ASD kid who talked incessantly about her obsession, if at all, and had never even so much as kissed a boy.

My metalhead friends, on the other hand, generally don't feel the need to incessantly police each other for little weaknesses, and tear each other down.

 

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Well that depends. You assume, as VI pointed out, that the external act of donning their faces actually does deliver them from the obscenities of modern society. I think they are more of a product of modern society even in their attempt to escape it. There is no valid reason for me to believe they are any more intelligent or even that some of them are not reacting to some form of inner self-loathing than anyone else, to assume such would be to assume too much.

Modern society doesn't really expect people to act in expected ways, not like the restrictions in a traditional society (I know I'm presently living in one). Actually it is the freedom of Western modern society that allows them to take such extraordinary measures without being completely ostracized and placed in coventry.

 

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That's just high school.

 

I was brought up in America and I don't.

 

What I find most puzzling about permanent changes of appearance (usually tattoos) is the psychological thrust that must be behind them - in the sense of the conviction that one will always, for the rest of one's life, want to bear that same sign of self-expression, that that sign will remain relevant to oneself for the rest of one's life. I can't imagine what it must be like to make such a commitment.

A while back, I wanted to get someone's name tattooed on my arm. But as I was thinking about it, it struck me as lazy and lacking commitment, a taking for granted of that which I wanted to remind myself of with that tattoo.

There is a difference between a permanent tattoo, and writing that person's name on my body every day anew, or every day anew making some other mark on my body.
I find that doing it every day anew implies a greater act of awareness and commitment, than if it is something that just there. If something is just permanently there, after a while, I tend not to notice it at all.

 

No it wouldn't follow. See, people who get fake tits to feel better about themselves clearly lack confidence to be accepted as they are.

People who get horns implanted are clearly confident enough in themselves to know they are nice enough people and do not need to seek superficial acceptance. You have it ass-backwards.

Yeah, and then referred to body-modders as 'freaks' 'cos you are so understanding of their pov.

 

HAhaha, you don't get it.

It's not about them being different from everybody else. Just different from people like you.

 

When I was a metalhead in the shit backwater town I grew up in, we were too busy watching each other's backs from the soccer hooligans, who liked to single out, and beat up people that didn't look like them, to have infighting.

 

I don't know about others, but I didn't get mine as an escape from society.

I got them because I thought they looked cool, plus I have a little fixation with metals, I like to always wear some on me. Go figure.

Why must they be a political statement? When a teen girl gets her ears pierced, that's not seen as a psychologically or socially meaningful act. It's a piece of metal. But get one in your mouth, and suddenly everyone is arguing as to whether you did it as a political statement, or as an escape from society, or whatever.

?

 

No matter how far you think that you are not part of the herd, you never can escape being part of some flock of one kind or another.

 

Indeed. I don't think there is any form of self expression that has never been used before.

Just about anything you do can be construed as conformity. Are you wearing a certain colour, or a certain textile? Do you have your hair done a certain way? Then you are following a trend, technically.

But as I said, there's nothing wrong with being part of a group per se. What I have an issue with is the ones who want sameness for its own sake and think that differing from mainstream culture is some sort of disease or moral failing.

 

I also have a problem with people's hypocrisy.

Next time some narrow-minded middle-aged woman points at my mouth and asks 'Is that a form of self-harm'? I'll point at her ears and ask the exact same question.

 

that is why i have never gotten a tattoo..

haven't found anything i would want on my body for the rest of my life, as i know my taste changes from year to year.

 

People do get tattoos and never regret them.

There are quite a few older metal dudes walking around who have never felt the need to have their lasered off.

 

There is no doubt that there are many people who have tattoos and who do not regret them.

There are also many people who have tattoos and who do regret them.

Like I said earlier - What is it that makes a person so sure they will want to have that same tattoo, that same external sign for the rest of their life? How do people arrive at such certainty? And why do others not have such certainty?

 

Of course they are a product of modern society—and that's the irony. I'm sure that after they've crossed the threshold of experimentation they've come to realize that it's not so much escape that has been achieved but a maneuvering around modern society: setting up camp not at some "fringe" limbo outside modern society but at a frontier of modern society—while retaining all the benefits of it too, like the electricity to power up their social networking websites and their ego-bending music (and how could music not play a role in all of this?).

Perhaps not in expected ways but certainly within certain parameters. Look at the modern French, the joujous of high culture and fashionable morals who are intolerant of the roaming gypsies—have we ever heard of gypsy extremists and orthodox gypsies? But I'm sure the French see them as an eyesore.

You mean the freedom of western modern culture in alliance with the freedom of western modern business? How else could a Ga Ga been devised?

 

Because it's not high IQs and BMWs that prove achievement but rather the achievement to laissez faire.