Body Art: The Short Art
A form of art that perishes with the artist is considered repulsive by many.
"The body decorations that adorn 33% of Americans from ages 18-39 years old are often regarded as being devoid of beauty and artistic value."
Body art is not a new idea invented by rebellious teenagers in America, but an ancient art form incorporating various meanings. Egyptians adorned their bodies with jewelry in order to show their wealth and status. Body piercings and tattoos in ancient Rome symbolized one’s strength for enduring the pain associated with these procedures. Ancient Aztecs had tongue piercings in order to better communicate with the Gods (http://ezinearticles.com/?The-History-of-Body-Piercings). In current American society there is often misunderstanding and a lack of respect for body art.
Body decorations are regarded as inappropriate, disgusting, and unethical because of America’s obsession with beauty. In America, beauty has specific “standards”, which most magazines, TV producers, and businesses adhere to. None of these standards include body decorations. In fact, body piercings and tattoos are often related to repulsiveness and inferiority, such as calling them “tramp stamps” and “white trash”. Thus, today’s society shuns body decorations because the TV, modeling, and business industries regard them as anti-conformity to their standards of beauty. Rarely do models, actresses, and musicians in the commercial industry have body piercings and tattoos, not because of an attempt to uphold the moral values of America, but because they are considered offensive and ugly. If it were an attempt to uphold morality, they wouldn’t be revealing 90-100% of their bodies, engaging in sexual activity, and use profane language.
Thus, it is the unfavorable connotation of body decorations in current American society, which stems from the Puritan’s idealistic model for America that regarded body decorations as satanic, that prevents piercings and tattoos from being accepted as an art form. It is wrong and unfair to associated body decorations with a lack of intelligence, beauty, and morality. In fact, many people who have piercings and tattoos had them done for aesthetic reasons. Out of the fourteen friends, family, and peers I briefly interviewed who had tattoos and/or piercings, twelve of them claimed that they have body decorations because they consider them aesthetically pleasing and attractive. This proves that the current “standards” of beauty displayed across the TV screen and magazines do not represent what many people actually consider beautiful.
If more people were willingly to view body art without the damaging misconceptions that current society has subconsciously embedded into their perception of beauty, perhaps, body art will be regarded as having the same artistic integrity as other forms of modern art. Body art is exactly as the term describes it, art on the body. Art is an attempt to make current emotions and actions permanent for many generations to freely interpret. As Hippocrates once wrote, “Ars est longis, vita est brevis”, art is long, life is short; thus, body decorations is extremely special because it enables living individuals to display their art until death, when their art disintegrates along with their flesh. Body decoration is a way to express an individual’s personality, strength, and spirit for a single lifetime. How can it not be beautiful?
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