David Kotker’s upper arm is ringed with third-degree burns. The scars, branded into his flesh with white-hot steel, form a series of North African tree symbols.
Kotker, 33, is the owner of No Hope, No Fear, a Wicker Park tattoo and body-piercing shop where customers also can have designs branded into their skin.
Branding is one of the latest fads in body ornamentation, along with skin cutting. And yet, brandings and cuttings are nothing new. Along with tattooing and body piercing, they have been used for thousands of years by cultures around the world in religious and tribal ceremonies, to mark rites of passage and as a means of beautification.
But as body modifications become increasingly popular, and progressively more extreme, it’s fair to ask: Where does beautification end and self-mutilation begin?
“It can be a form of self-injury,” says Wendy Lader, a clinical psychologist at Hartgrove Hospital, a private psychiatric facility on Chicago’s West Side. Lader works with women who habitually slice their arms with razor blades as a means of alleviating overwhelming anxiety. Lader suggests that many forms of body modification derive from similar psychological impulses.
“There are some obvious differences-self-injury tends to be very private,” she says. But kids who pay to have their bodies burned, cut or pierced “find a socially acceptable venue for this kind of internal stuff.”
Ancient mutilative rituals, some of which are still practiced in other cultures, often involve “notions of salvation, healing, prevention of illness and social orderliness,” says Dr. Armando Favazza, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Missouri at Columbia. He specializes in self-injurious behavior and is the author of “Bodies Under Siege:Self-Mutilation in Culture and Psychiatry (Johns Hopkins University Press).
Some young Americans who go in for body modifications say their motivations are spiritual, or arise from tribal origins. Favazza admits that some people in our culture modify their bodies for healthy reasons, for beautification, but says that “in general, you probably find more psychopathology in that group.
“But that doesn’t mean that every person who goes in for piercing is mentally ill,” he says.
Staci Slattery makes no apologies for her body decorations. “It’s about being able to define yourself,” she says. “You’re always going to run into people who are repulsed by it. But I say, `Hey, this is who I am, deal with it.’ “
The 24-year-old North Sider carries the 4-by-4-inch scar of the initials of a former lover that were burned into her left hip a few years ago. “It’s the type of thing you do when you’re 19 and don’t know any better,” she admits. She says she might get branded again-just not with anyone’s initials.
Slattery recently had two designs cut into her skin: a 3-by-3-inch star on her upper arm, and a 10-by-8-inch tree that starts on her shoulder blade and climbs onto the back of her neck. Pulverized gemstones were sprinkled into the star-to color it and help hold it open, for better scarification, she says-and sea salt was rubbed into the cuts that form the tree design. “That was intensely painful,” she says. “It took about 45 minutes of constant cuttings.” The wound was recut three weeks later, because, she says, “you want to irritate it, you really don’t want it to heal (too soon).”
Medical warnings
Doctors warn that irritated or untended wounds easily can become infected. “Any time there’s prolonged healing or irritation, it’s more likely that bacteria will get in there,” says Dr. Dave Eilers, an assistant professor of dermatology at Loyola University. “The same thing is true for burns.”
Eilers also cautions that foreign matter such as crushed gemstones can introduce bacteria. Even if such decorative powders are purified or sterilized, they may not be completely inert, so there’s still the risk of long-term effects, he says.
In Illinois, there are no laws against body branding or skin cutting, and only general business licenses are required for their practitioners. Kotker says he would support legislation requiring cutters and branders to be certified as competent and has been involved in attempts by others to introduce such laws.
Kotker, who learned to cut and brand during workshops taught by experienced practitioners in Chicago, says a proper brand should be a raised, third-degree burn. It should go through all skin layers, into the body fat, and destroy the nerve endings there, to minimize pain.
Kotker cuts fresh strips of metal for each new branding. He holds the strip with a vise-grip, and heats it with a propane torch. Then he brings the hot strip down in a series of quick strokes, following a stenciled design on the person’s skin.
Eilers says the health implications of cuttings and burnings go far deeper than the epidermis. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for people to do this stuff, to run around cutting themselves,” he says. “But I think the psychological aspect is the major problem.”
Some like the process
Like many people who go in for body modifications, Slattery says the process of being cut was more important to her than the design itself.
“I like the blood aspect of it,” she says. “You lose a lot of blood in a cutting. It’s very purifying.” She says she’ll keep her memory of the experience as long as, if not longer than, the scar itself.
Kotker, too, says some of his customers get branded “for the experience of it.”
Some people liken such experiences to the effects of a powerful drug. “It’s a rush,” says a young man who calls himself Jojo. “It takes me to another plane.”
“To some degree it’s true-you do get a certain physical elation,” says a man who calls himself Mad Jack and owns Body Basics, a North Side tattoo and piercing shop that also offers cuttings.
Just as many people get hooked on the end result as on the fleeting sensations of the experience itself, Mad Jack says. “When people realize that it wasn’t so bad, that they survived it, they start to enjoy the work and the admiration, and it makes them want more,” he says.
“For a few minutes of discomfort, I’m going to get something that I really enjoy,” Kotker says.
But in its habit-forming nature, Lader sees a strong link between body modification and deliberate self-injury.
“The escalation, the need for more, is very similar to self-mutilation.” she says. “I think it’s more than just a fashionable thing. They may think it’s adornment, and I’m sure they think it’s OK, but I would be really interested to find out about their home lives. It’s my belief that they’re running from something.”
The mutilation debate
The intersection of Clark Street and Belmont Avenue, and the confluence of Damen, North, and Milwaukee Avenues, are centers of Chicago’s body-modification culture. The area around Clark and Belmont attracts more than its share of homeless and runaway kids. Such groups are classic examples of outsiders trying hard to reject the conforming pressures of mainstream society, only to find themselves stuck with new sets of rules, and new expectations, from their peers.
Kotker admits that people modify their bodies to fit in, but he and Mad Jack dismiss comparisons between body modification and self-injury.
“I do not consider scarification or branding to be mutilation,” Mad Jack says. “There is no parallel, there is no correlation that relates the two. They’re on opposite ends of the galaxy.”
But Favazza says he thinks there are “tremendous parallels” between body modification and self-injurious behavior. “They share an identical purpose,” he says.
Kotker insists he never has had clients abuse themselves through brandings or cuttings, but admits “it certainly could happen.” He says he would turn away a customer who he believed was out to harm his or her body.
According to Mad Jack, it’s the person’s motivation and lack of malice toward himself that differentiates beautification from self-mutilation. “When there’s logic, control, reason, ethics and professionalism involved, then it’s a viable, alternative art form,” he says.
“There’s always going to be someone who takes something too far, who takes something good and makes it bad,” he says. “I would concede that there are people who do these things because they have psychotic problems, but I try to weed them out.”
He insists that many of those who undergo body modification “are not subversive, lower-class people. They’re sophisticated, educated, professional, middle- and upper-class.”
Drawing the line
Though Mad Jack makes his living tattooing, piercing and cutting designs into his customers, he refuses to do branding.
“I don’t like the smell of burned human flesh,” he says. “But I’m not qualified to judge whether what an individual is doing is correct or not.”
Some experts, in both the mental-health and body-modification camps, say the impulse to decorate and modify one’s body is often a reaction to the constrictions of modern life. “It can be a protest against the artificiality of our times,” Favazza says, but he adds that some people may not understand their own reasons for changing themselves.
“The more sophisticated and confining society gets, the more we’re turning toward our primitive instincts, which are to decorate the body,” says Milio, owner of a North Side hair salon that offers body modifications.
But people who accept one form of body modification often blanch at the thought of another. A young woman with a pierced nose and lip says she thinks branding “sounds kind of sick.” A hairdresser who is considering having his genitals pierced says he considers branding extreme, and “would never, ever do something like that.”
If the trend continues toward increasingly drastic body modifications, what will follow cutting and branding? Amputation? As Mad Jack puts it: “Ten to 15 years from now, people will be looking for other things to do with their bodies. It’s never going to disappear. It’s never going to go away.”
