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Piercing - history, distribution and forms
contents
- A global phenomenon
- Piercing in the west
- Piercings, Cuttings, Brandings
- Differences among the piercings
- Virtual nudity
- Mass culture and demarcation
A global phenomenon
Indigenous people in America, Africa and Eurasia used sticks and rings in earlobes, nostrils, lips or genitals. They used materials such as wood, mother of pearl, clay or bone, gold or silver. Indians in South America pierced tongue, cheeks, ears and the genitals explicitly as an offering to the gods.
For millennia of years, a variety of cultures and ethnicities have practiced targeted piercing of skin and body sites, e.g. to attach jewelry to the nose or ears. (Image: erichon / fotolia.com) Native North American sun dancers pierce the skin on the chest and back, threading wooden sticks tied with strings, tie them to a tree and dance without food and water until they collapse with exhaustion. Again, it is a religious act.
Piercing in the west
In the US and Europe, piercings, apart from women's earrings, remained a hallmark of subcultures until the 1980s. For example, earrings in the right earlobe have served as a feature of male homosexuals since the 1970s. In Aschaffenburg, the tattoo artist Horst Heinrich Streckenbach practiced the piercing of body parts and subsequent insertion of jewelry back in the 1940s.
In the 1980s, the subculture of Modern Primitives established itself in the United States, which referred to the customs of the so-called primitive peoples. Piercing, but also ornamental colors, cutting or branding, not only cited indigenous cultures, but also served expressively to distinguish themselves as "urban Indians" from the Western industrial culture.
These Modern Primitives were in contact with American Natives, but their Elder Ones were skeptical of the appropriation of traditional aspects of Native American cultures. Later, supporters of the so-called Crust Punk movement deliberately withdrew from mainstream American culture, founded trailer settlements on the Mexican border, lived vegan, had their hair matted and pierced their skin.
BDSM culture focused on the pain of piercing the skin and body, and until the 1990s it was largely secretive, as this subculture had the nimbus of the "pervert". In the 1990s, however, BDSM emerged from the niche of the disreputable and mingled with the punk, metal and gothic scene. Piercings were now a fashion of the masses.
In the early 1990s, nipples and cords piercing were still considered unusual, and more and more "normal" tempted this extraordinary body jewelry. Jewelry on the genitals and tongue, however, was still largely limited to subcultures.
Piercings in the navel established themselves with us only in the course of the 1990s. (Image: Yolanda Di Mambro / fotolia.com) Piercings, Cuttings, Brandings
In the US, however, the development was more advanced, and in subcultures there, the development was also due to the prevalence of piercings in the mainstream in an increasingly extreme direction: who as a "Gothic", "SM freak" or "vampire" held something on itself , now tried cuttings, brandings, bullets inserted under the skin, or at least jewelry that pierced the glans or clitoris. At the latest, when Tekkno reached millions of teenagers, piercings and tattoos were a must-have.
Today, this form of body jewelry is widely used in Germany. According to surveys, 9% of women have at least one on the body and at least 3% of men, of which 9.3% of all 25 to 34 year old men. The most common piercing is still the earring, followed by rings, rods, balls, etc. in the navel and nostrils.
Differences among the piercings
The selection, quantity and shape are subject to trends within the general piercing fashion. For one thing, there are big differences between individuals. These range from the clerk at the public order office, who carries a navel piercing, of which only her intimate partner knows, to the street punk, who carries the dozens of pieces of metal in the face and thus signals from the outset that he is not available for a bourgeois career path.
Meanwhile, in the 1990s, the piercing of the eyebrows, navel and tongue became fashionable, the latter expressing a particular "hardness", brow and tongue piercings are currently not much in demand. Also, many wearers and wearers removed the jewelry in these places because they bothered in the long run. By contrast, today's extended earlobes are fashion, as are the labret and the septum piercing. Especially Intimpiercings are increasing.
Today, mostly dilated ear holes ("Flesh Tunnel") and septum piercings are the trend. (Image: sine wave / fotolia.com) Virtual nudity
Intimate piercings are associated with the widespread fashion of shaving off not only the armpit but also the pubic hair. Sociologists explain this, among other things, with the ubiquity of pornography on the Internet.
In contrast to the 1990s, the genitals are no longer regarded as an area hidden from the public, but as a view more accessible, which is therefore also aestheticized. Genital piercings belong to the public appearance as well as makeup or hairstyle. For example, piercings are popular with women on the Venushügel, which in the 1990s belonged above all to the BDSM scene.
The paradox is that the piercing in a certain way the nudity clad: the jewels for indigenous people who wear only a little clothing, just to cultivate their body in the literal sense, so to raise the object of cultural design and straight not to be naked like the animals.
Mass culture and demarcation
Piercings today lack the essential element for piercing the body skin in punks, crust punks or modern primitives: they are not part of the counterculture but of "normal culture".
The counterculture has a lot to do with indigenous cultures: here, too, the members of a subculture are different from others; Here, too, the piercing of skin and body parts and the application of jewelery is an initiation rite; In both, piercings define social status. In the mainstream, on the other hand, they are "only": jewelry. Only in combination with other symbols and / or through extreme forms they allow demarcation such as self-expression. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Specialist supervision: Barbara Schindewolf-Lensch (doctor)