Piercing the skin
One interesting item in the Banks chapter of The Age of Wonder is Banks’s account of witnessing a girl get a tattoo. Happily, his journal is online; it was July 5 1969 1769.
This morn I saw the operation of Tattowing the buttocks performd upon a girl of about 12 years old, it provd as I have always suspected a most painfull one. It was done with a large instrument about 2 inches long containing about 30 teeth, every stroke of this hundreds of which were made in a minute drew blood. The patient bore this for about ¼ of an hour with most stoical resolution; by that time however the pain began to operate too stron[g]ly to be peacably endurd, she began to complain and soon burst out into loud lamentations and would fain have persuaded the operator to cease; she was however held down by two women who sometimes scolded, sometimes beat, and at others coaxd her. I was setting in the adjacent house with Tomio for an hour, all which time it lasted and was not finishd when I went away tho very near. This was one side only of her buttocks for the other had been done some time before. The arches upon the loins upon which they value themselves much were not yet done, the doing of which they told causd more pain than what I had seen.
Familiar, isn’t it, right down to the women holding her down.
It’s much less gruesome than genital mutilation, because it’s not harmful in the same way (unless, it belatedly occurs to me, there is infection, which there must have been at least sometimes)…but it’s gruesome enough. Holmes quotes Banks writing several years later, in a letter:
For this Custom, they give no reason, but that they were taught it by their forefathers…So essential is it esteemed to Beauty, and so disgraceful is the want of it deemed, that every one submits to it.
Quite – just like FGM, just like bound feet. The girl tried to bear it, but it got too bad, and she wanted it to stop – but the two women held her down.
It’s funny…I went to a very small very academic girls’ school. At some point most of my classmates got their ears pierced, but I didn’t. It was kind of esteemed essential to Beauty, also sort of hip and new (our mothers wore clip-on earrings), which I liked to be…but I never wanted pierced ears. I never wanted even such a minor mutilation – I remember really just not liking the idea of a hole in my ear lobes. It’s just as well I didn’t grow up in Tahiti in the 18th century.
You mean July 5 1769.
From Tahiti to Somalia, the justification given is always the same. Tradition, tradition, tradition. Our ancestors did it and so should we.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Piercing the skin http://dlvr.it/9Tw8m […]
SOME day, hopefully, the last frontier will be crossed and we will no longer consider children property. How hard a concept is that to accept? Apparently incredibly difficult.
To my eyes, any piercings tatoos or even makeup, reduce a persons attractiveness. If an adults *want* such things for themselves it is their choice, but the possibility of harm means they should *not* be done to children.
It is potentially infectious with hepatitis C, I would say. Very dangerous.
I think it’s clear that hep c evolved based either on “medical” treatments like acupuncture, or tatooing. How else could a human disease that is spread only by blood-to-blood contact (not even sexually) arise and survive? It’s known to be far older than IV drug use.
I never wear makeup, but I did get my ears pierced when I was 40 (a couple of years after my husband got his pierced)
Oddly enough, my strongly atheist dad allowed a hindu ear-piercing ceremony for his daughters. Given that we didnt celebrate a single hindu festival, it was a big surprise to have a priest and lots of guests descend upon us for the traditional ceremony. I was five, my mouth was stuffed with sweets, my uncle held me in his lap while the priest leaned over to do the job. No memory of pain. All my sisters and I wore simple starshaped gold studs with a different precious stone(mine was sapphire) throughout our childhood. We only took those off when we became older teenagers and my mother still holds on to them.
I have issues with my parents but their decision to peirce my ears has never been on the radar. My grandmother had a small tattoo done on her arm when she was a child. She had been ill and the hindu mandala symbol was to ward off the ‘evil eye’. In rural India of that time, that was the best that concerned parents knew to do. It would be a frickin stupid thing to do in an era when there is access to good medical care and advice. There is a (limited) context within which to understand my grandma’s tattoo as a sign of love, rather than cruelty.
Genital mutilation or extensive body tattoos done on a child are obviously a different matter.
I was going to say and this happened only a fortnight before the first moon landing but Saikat Biswas beat me to it. That made me think that most societies would probably not tolerate such an occurence now (forced tattooing) but paradoxically some parts, even in western societies, still seek to justify FGM as a ‘cultural’ custom that we must not criticise or attempt to ban.
There is a key difference between the tattooing as described and FGM – the former apparently was intended to improve one’s sexual appeal (presumably based on what Banks wrote) whereas the latter is used to control a female and her sex drive. I would also question whether the tattooing as it was witnessed was not a voluntary act – note that this was her second time at it and she did not complain for the first 15 minutes. It sounds stupid to me but in some cultures people willingly undergo painful initiation rituals – just look at US colleges fraternities and sororities, and in Australia some Aboriginal tribes knock out perfectly good teeth – neither ritual interests me one bit but as long as it’s only adults doing this to themselves voluntarily and there are no health costs to society then I’m not concerned.
Plus one shouldn’t forget that at 12 years old that humans are sexually aware, even if not sexually active, which is why menstruation and sperm production start around this time. Most western societies infantilise children way beyond this time, including trying to control their sex lives by preventing them from having sex. And then wonder why the western societal construct of “teenagers” rebel when they are just acting like any adult would if someone was trying to control their lives, especially their sex lives! Just look at the different ages of consent throughout the world. On average the more “primitive” cultures have a much lower age than the “civilized” world which should make you wonder which are in fact the more “civilized”. Most of the former co-sleep with their babies and younger children too, which is another non-child abusive, loving, bonding custom that western society should fully adopt.
I’m an unpierced, circumcised man but I only regret the latter. This is because of the sexual sensations I will never be able to experience, and it must be pretty good because I love sex, and that it was done to me as a baby when I did not have any choice. I consider body piercing of any kind to be a form of self mutilation, and my personal problems in life haven’t manifested into that (as yet).
I agree wholeheartedly with jemand’s comment that children should not be treated as property.
And also point out that in those same societies boys also underwent the same procedures at the same age.
Ophelia, a small correction: I think you mean Ethiopia 2009…
A little part of me dies when I see a girl with a tongue piercing, or a tattoo over her breasts.
Oops! Quite right, Saikat.
Right (mirax, Jim M, Mike) – the differences were part of my point. It’s mixed. Clearly it was partly voluntary – but not really, since it was essential for Beauty (and I don’t think that was purely sexual, I think it was Beauty more generally – for not looking wrong and weird and lacking). But it wasn’t nearly as fundamentally deforming and anti-functional as FGM or footbinding – but it must have been very risky, and then the pain was clearly nasty. It’s mixed.
Still, given all the bads, it’s clearly a Tradition they would have been better off without. It’s interesting that humans create traditions for themselves that just aren’t all that beneficial.
The Tahitians also created surfing though. There’s a marvelous passage where Banks and someone else are out in a boat and spot a group of young men doing something they’ve never seen before, and they gaze raptly for half an hour at the spectacle. Now that’s a nice tradition!
Quite. And we should pay respect to that tradition of, er – citing tradition as a warrant for respect.