Passing trend, ritual adornment or self-mutilation — whichever way you look at it, body piercing is ‘in’. Malu van Leeuwen investigates
IN Tsukamoto’s cult film Tetsuo: The Iron Man, a metal fetishist inserts a large tubular bar of steel into an open, self-inflicted wound in his thigh. We may not have reached this level in South Africa, but more and more people are choosing to pierce parts of their bodies other than their ears.
Jason Macdonald, a professional body adornment artist based in Cape Town, estimates that he has pierced up to 1 000 clients in the past six months. For him, the increasing willingness to perforate the flesh with exotic jewellery is no commercial accident inspired by Madonna’s beringed bellybutton. Rather, piercing in the 1990s is an expression of the “new tribalism” — an extension of the sacred rituals of pagan puberty rites and bloodletting.
With a large proportion of the so-called Generation X coming from divorced families, he says, “we’re growing up with the attitude that we don’t need a family. Then, at a certain age, we realise we do need one, and piercing tends to make units, or little tribes, out of friends.”
Not that long ago, punk “tribes” tapped into the exhibitionist potential of piercing. Chains, attached by safety pins, linked ears, noses, nipples and scrotums, deliberately blurring the distinction between butchery and beautification. A cosmetic reflection of punk’s code of “otherness”, pierced skin also served as insulation from the general public and its social mores.
Jade, a Spanish body piercer with six years’ experience across the globe (and who has been modifying his own body for the past 15 years), suggests piercing was popularised by the gay constituency in America. “Piercing, branding, scarring, and so on, really hit the limelight through gays in the United States trying to be outrageous and rebellious.”
Jade attributes piercing’s new cult status — which goes hand-in-hand with contemporary music, whether rave, Gothic or industrial — to “a mental state that is fast becoming worldwide”, namely boredom and frustration. As such, the distinction between body adornment and its more negative incarnation, self-mutilation, can become blurred. In Turkey, Jade observes, “kids are burning and cutting their arms, which is not productive at all”.
In this sense, piercing can be used as a convenient platform from which to proclaim a globally bankrupt youth. But Mam Chen, of the US magazine In the Flesh, sees it as the reverse. “American culture steals our sense of self from us,” she writes. “It is vital to remain vigilant and to make certain that the piercings we choose … jar us back into the experience of who we are and inspire us to become more than that.”
In the South African context, the popularity of body piercing could be viewed as one attempt to gestate a new “identity”. But, according to Jade, South Africa’s once- estranged youths are simply blindly “rushing to catch up” with the rest of the world. “The most common reason (for piercing) that I’ve heard in South Africa is ‘because my friend’s got one’. I think it’s quite petty.”
The “new tribalism” espoused by Macdonald, however, is based on commitment and mutuality. He cites the ampallang — a horizontal piercing traversing the head of the penis — which is said to intensify sex for both partners. “The men that do it are more in touch with their feminine side. You don’t get bouncers or bodyguards or heavy macho types doing it.”
Seventy percent of Macdonald’s clients are women, but the ratio of genital and nipple piercings leans toward white — reportedly gay — males (in Cape Town, at least).
Says Macdonald: “I never thought of my nipples as erotic zones until I pierced them. Suddenly it felt as if I’d grown breasts. It reclaimed a part of my body that I wasn’t aware of.”
If you’re going to have a piercing, you should live it, maintains Jade, who only applies anaesthetic ointment to clients “if they really, really beg”. Cape Town’s Andrew went the DIY route, piercing his own nipple using a hypodermic syringe, followed by a rather large safety pin, to save himself R70. (The space between his thumb and forefinger is next on his agenda.)
But, while expense may motivate some backroom and home piercings, the hazards increase substantially. Incorrect techniques and inadequate sterilisation can result in scarring, blood poisoning, infection, loss of sensation and, in extreme cases, paralysis.
Also damaging is the way the media promotes the fallacy that “body piercing is a simple procedure of pushing a needle through skin.” Of particular concern to Macdonald is a recent feature on M-Net’s Carte Blanche which, he contends, misrepresented body piercing as mutilation — rather than as an art of adornment.
The programme focused on private piercers and a Durban jewellery shop. “You could see they were not using surgical stainless steel, which is standard for piercing and the most stable metal. Niobium, 14 or 18 carat gold and platinum are also safe and acceptable, but with other metals the quantity of copper and nickel can be quite poisonous.”
One piercer, he says, used the wrong gauge jewellery in a genital piercing. “Gauge is as important as placement. It’s okay when the penis is flaccid, but during erection and penetration the urethra might tear. That person will either have to be very careful when having sex, or have sex very seldom.”
Macdonald’s chief objection is to the implicit go-ahead given to unqualified piercers, jewellers and members of the public to experiment on themselves and others. “What we need is public awareness, so people know you can’t just put any old metal into your body, and that there are certain procedures for doing it … With awareness we’ll take away a lot of the taboo as well.”
In response, he and colleague Simon White intend forming a legal body and training school for piercers.
But as far as Jade is concerned, the sooner piercing is returned to the realm of art and ritual, the better. “People are too wrapped up in steel,” is his verdict. When requested to define “ritual” a veil of secrecy was drawn — and the tape recorder switched off. (The warthog tooth he once had in his neck may or may not have something to do with it.)
One modern primitive concluded: “It’s not just something rock stars do when they’ve run out of musical ideas, or that weirdos inflict on themselves in their spare time. Contrary to the myth of pop culture, it’s more than a disposable accessory. It’s a bit like Coke, a way of life.”