To start off with a little story time from my personal life (Just an FYI, this discussion has happened to me many many times), I was talking to my lovely mother about random stuff, and a topic that came up, by just looking at my face, was me getting more tattoos and piercings. And the biggest bizarre thing: my mom thought I was crazy to want body modifications. I have always wanted a split tongue since I was 15.
You may be confused on what the hell is a Body Modification. Some may already know if you’re heavily pierced up, but Body Modifications are the altering of human appearance, mainly physical features. This could be tattoos and piercings on and in the skin.
Originally, body modifications were traditional in certain areas of the world, but they’ve become more of a western thing since more ideas of body modification came up. Some examples of body modifications are split tongues, having your tongue split down in the middle to make two, and tattoo blacking either on your teeth, face, or popularly the arms. An extreme body modification would be implants to make a symbol of some sort in your body.
So, why do Body Modifications get scrutinized so much? Well, that’s because most people do not expect other people to “ruin their bodies” to look a certain way. Little do they know, some people like it and feel more human doing these extreme or simple body modifications. People not expecting others to do these hurtful things to their bodies, makes looking for certain jobs hard. As a person who has facial piercings, I’m nervous about my professional career search, since most companies or places would require you to remove them or cover them up for professional reasons. In my personal opinion, I think this should immediately change because people’s appearance should be the lowest priority in a business. Of course being clean and keeping up for yourself is important, but when you have these body modifications or facial tattoos or piercings, that should not matter as long as you’re doing your job and not causing trouble in the workplace. I found that most people I know don’t know this struggle or fear of not being accepted in a place because of how you look, and then not knowing you feel more yourself in your own skin having these body modifications (even though some people may have their own reasons for getting those modifications, I do too). But I think that shouldn’t stop people with heavy body modifications from having a professional job that they enjoy or need. Society is far from knowing how to accept people based on their looks or appearance and stop criticizing them for looking a certain way. I know a lot of assumptions get made from people who do body modifications, a variety of assumptions from people who have just a simple ear piercing or nothing at all.
Overall, Body Modifications are a wonderful and fascinating thing to see a person have, and that should be accepted in our society all the time including in the workforce. I say this a lot now in interviews that don’t like my facial piercings. I’d rather them judge how I work and my ability to do the job than how I look.