Are Tattoos Still Extreme Body Modification

30 years ago if someone had told me that they paid someone to surgically cut a design into them or that they made an appointment to have their alma matter branded onto their arm I would have laughed and said something like "ya like that would ever happen". Thank God I didn't because boy would I have looked stupid, and believe me I don't need the help.

30 years ago tattooing didn't enjoy the popularity it does today and a person who had a tattoo was looked at with the awe and, sometimes disgust, that we afford people who have one leg or a prosthetic hand. The were looked at with a crooked eye while moms pulled their child a little closer as a person with visible tattoos walked by. Today tattoos are much more welcome in all social circles, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Because tattooing has become more accepted those who who want to stay on the outskirts of accepted society have had to come up with different ways to express their individuality and non-conformist ways.

Piercing was the first discipline to work towards the extreme side. Genital piercings, eyebrows, lips, multiple earrings were the start. Now piercings like corsets, where several piercings are made down the back and a ribbon or something of the like is strung through pieces of jewelry in the piercings, suspensions where hooks are placed and put through the skin in specific areas of the body and the person being suspended is lifted into the air and transdermal piercing in which a piece of jewlery is place partially above and partially below the skin and the skin heals around it. It's a piercing without an exit.

There are other types of exteme body modification also such subdermal implants which is placing a type of body jewelry underneath the skin, tongue splitting, earlobe gauging, branding, scarification and many other types of modification.

People have found a way to seperate themselves from mainstream society other than tattoos and while tattooing is still a form of body modification I'm not sure the use of extreme can be used with it.

I think the other forms of extreme body modification are safe from becoming mainstream but for how long I wonder