Body modification as self-mutilation by proxy

Other problems include candidal infections of the navel, and moist areas such as genitalia and the nose. Infections can arise from trauma-induced tears. Some people form keloids or scar tissue and diabetic patients should not have piercings. Piercing has been known to cause a range of other infections including tuberculosis, tetanus, hepatitis, and toxic shock syndrome. The practice of branding hurts a great deal. Tongue piercing can create particular problems such as swallowing or inhaling the stud, the formation of cysts, scarring, damage to nerves and veins, neuromas and damage to teeth. The splitting of tongues can lead to loss of the ability to speak.

The most common form of severe self-mutilation by proxy is cosmetic surgery and this practice overwhelmingly affects women. Many of the forms of harm promoted to women by television shows and the advertisements of surgeons derive directly from the pornographication of western culture.

Breast enlargement originated in the prostitution by the western armies of occupation of Japanese women after World War II, who were seen as being the wrong shape for men’s excitement. In the West it developed from the so-called sexual revolution in the 1960s in which men’s practice of buying women in prostitution was destigmatised. The sex industry expanded swiftly in the US through pornography and stripping and the large breasts the male buyers demanded were created at first by silicone injections which caused even more severe harms to health than implants.

More recently labiaplasty, the removal of women’s labia to make their genitals fit the pornographic ideal, has become a profitable area for surgeons. Prostituted women in pornography were the first to have their genitalia modified, and the first in western culture to remove genital hair so that men could stare directly at the exposed genitals. Now, of course, the hair removal, called Brazilian waxing, is practiced in what are called beauty salons.

Other forms of invasive and risky surgery are also becoming much more common. Liposuction, in which fat on the tummy or thighs is liquified and sucked out through a tube, is a temporary solution that some women seek to their failure to live up to the dictates of a male-dominant culture. Silicone is put into lips and cheeks, buttocks (in South America in particular) receive implants, faces are cut up and rearranged.

The routinisation of seriously invasive cosmetic surgery is evident in the discussion forums and message boards that the industry has set up in recent years to gain clients and encourage women to pay for their services. The message boards are sections of the websites of cosmetic surgery clinics and referral services. Women’s agonised requests for help or reassurance reveal the damage that is being inflicted. Problems that women discuss include swelling, bruising, pain, numbness, itching, smell, unwanted lumps, dents and constipation.

There are deaths too. Major surgery requires anaesthesia and always involves some risk. Olivia Goldsmith, the US author of the novel on which the movie First Wives Club was based, suffered a heart attack from a bad reaction to the anaesthetic during a routine cosmetic surgery procedure to tighten skin on her neck. This unregulated abuse by surgeons who should do no harm does not arouse the outrage that it should because there is a societal acceptance that women should suffer to be beautiful.

The seriously invasive surgery involved in breast implantation, for instance, might be considered savage if it were carried out at a body modification convention. When it is done by surgeons in the name of relieving the supposedly ordinary distress of women about their appearance it can be seen as unremarkable. Also there is huge profit in it. The cosmetic surgery industry in the US was estimated in 2003 to be worth $US8 billion a year.

The practices of mutilation that are being carried out on the bodies of women, girls and vulnerable categories of men in the early 21st Century are savage and increasing in their brutality. Underlying the demand for these practices is the despair of those with low social status, particularly women and gay men. The harms of misogyny, sexual and physical abuse and gay-hating, create the ability of those who self-mutilate to disassociate emotionally from their bodies, and to blame their bodies for their distress.

The cosmetic surgeons, piercers and cutters, sadists, those who watch cutting and SM performances on the Internet or in practice for sexual thrills, and those who create academic careers out of making the cutting up seem glamorous or avant garde, are parasitic on these harms and help to perpetuate them.