Body Modification
by Kgomotsego Letlhatlhe
Tattooing is the most common type of body modification and they serve the same reasons at present as they have for centuries in different cultures. For example in many cultures around the world, tattoos have long been a way of identifying one as being part of a particular group, indicating their status within that group, or even differentiating themselves from others. Its fashionable even today that people still tattoo themselves a way to assert individuality or as way to stand out from a normal human being and even associating themselves with a specific subculture.
In the process of body scarification which is similar to tattoos but scars are formed by cutting and branding the skin by varying methods sometimes using further sequential aggravating wound healing methods are intervals, like irritation, to purposely influence wound healing to scar more and not scar less. It is sometimes called cicatrization from the French equivalent. There are also aesthetic, religious, and social reasons for scarification, like scarification has been widely used by many West African tribes to brand milestone stages in both men and women's lives, such as puberty and marriage. It is also used to transmit complex message permanent body markings mixed social, political, and religious roles. Scars, tattoos branding, and piercings, when they are voluntarily acquired, are ways of showing a person's autobiography on the surface of the body to the world.
