In the broadest sense, body modification has been practiced by adults and children of many cultures for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Tattoos, nose piercing, ear plugs, lip rings and other traditions have long been commonplace among indigenous cultures of Africa, Indonesia, Central America and in many other corners of the globe.
Body modification is still popular today for all ages. Some practices are so routine—like circumcision and ear piercing—that we don’t even think about them as body modification any longer. Some are quite the opposite. In fact, if you are strong of stomach, you can visit the wikipedia page for body modification and read about almost unimaginable alterations some people are willing to undergo. If you’re a parent, it’s probably not a bad idea to know something about this, just in case.
One interesting, mainly recent trend is elf ears. No, not the kind you or your child might wear on Halloween, the permanent, surgical kind. A Hungarian surgeon, Dr. Lajos Nagy, is said to perform this body modification on young hipsters in New York.
The procedure involves cutting into the top of the ear, then reshaping skin and cartilage and placing sutures to re-form the tip into a point. On his website, Dr. Nagy calls the modification “Music Faun” and claims that pointy ears enhance the experience of listening to music, as well as boosting your attractiveness.
Could this be true? Search as you might, you aren’t likely to find scientific evidence that pointy ears are better for listening to music. In fact, Nagy’s site makes more than one suspicious claim; for instance, that the procedure is becoming so popular that in urban areas, so-called Faun Clubs are opening “one after another” and you can only get in if you have pointed ears. Again, some quick search engine research finds no evidence of this happening.
If you look hard enough, the whole thing begins to feel like an Internet scam or hoax. Some bloggers believe that’s exactly what’s going on. It is true that elf ear surgery is available. Russ Foxx, a well-known body modification artist, does “ear pointing” in his Vancouver studio but has just a couple of different clients in his photo gallery and does not list the cost on his fairly comprehensive price list.
Foxx is not the only artist who does ear pointing, and indeed there are people who react to images of elf ears on the Web by gushing things along the lines of “what I would give to have those!” But will pointed ears sweep the nation? Will your youngster want to be the next “Music Faun?”
It seems unlikely that the popularity of ear pointing will explode. The hard core body mod set is much more into extreme tattoos, multiple piercings, scarification, branding and implanting various bumps and shapes under the skin. And no matter how “out there” your youngster is, or how hip they think they are, few kids truly want to modify themselves permanently to stand out like an elf.
So parents, take heart. Your little angel isn’t too likely to come home and tell you he or she wants elf ears. A tattoo—maybe. And perhaps after you educate yourself on the latest in bod mods, a tattoo won’t seem so awful.
http://www.modernplasztika.co.hu/audioful_eng.html
http://russfoxx.com/