There are several "mainstream" body modifications in these days. Plastic surgery and diet is the main of the mainstream body modification. Even though they are considered as the "mainstream", it is controversial. This wasn't accepted when they first came out. For instance, many people think that plastic surgery is ridiculous at the first time. But since it became so popular, many people changed their mind.( For sure, there's still some people who against the plastic surgery.)
However, I think these body modification has almost same political potential as radical body modification which is heavy tattoos or piercing and flesh hanging. Even though it became so popular, it's still body modification. It can not be just same as normal. Many people think that these mainstream body modifications is regarded as normal, because their goal is to be close to the normative standards. But we have to think about the normative standards. What is normative standard? It could be various for every single group. Some group can think that normative is having a piercing and tattoos.
Pitt argues that body modification is to represent their body and claim some important things for their body. For this point of view, it can be applied to the mainstream body modification as well. They do it because they want to represent their beauty or health by their body. Maybe beauty and health is so popular and normal goal to represents themselves. So many people think that their body modification is ‘normal’. Taking all this into account, I think mainstream body modification has same political potential and meaning as radical body modification.
1 comment:
I agree with your statements on the topic, and I applaud you for putting into a more pithy form than my own blog post. It’s important to note that doing permanent things to your body, whatever it is, is still loaded and somewhat controversial. While I don’t remember when plastic surgery initially debuted, I’m sure it was extremely controversial, not only for the health risks, but for the fact of changing your body permanently out of vanity; getting a surgery that is unnecessary for health reasons, and is only performed for cosmetic reasons. Of course it is going to undergo criticism and being of a taboo nature, just like non-normative body modification. There is someone I know that I have known for most of my life, who only recently I found out had rhinoplasty, or a ‘nose job’, earlier in life before I knew this person, and had not told me until I found out of my own years later. This example shows how taboo even normative body modification can be, with a person not telling someone that they have been close to for years. The hiding of normative body modification might have to do with the difference in how normative and non-normative body modification is regarded; with non-normative, it is considered a change to the body, while normative, it probably would be considered a ‘correction’, like something was wrong in the first place. With non-normative, it is only enhancement.
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