Would you like a lox schmear with that bagel in your forehead?

Club kids in Japan are kicking extreme body modification up a notch by having lumps and bumps injected into their foreheads (and other body parts) via saline inflations or injections of saline into bags that are inserted under the skin. These self-inflicted deformations (like the bagel face saline implantations above) look insane, but they can be deflated by the next day. Want to find out about other body modifications? read more.

Extreme body modification isn't new. A search led me to an illuminating list of body modifications, illuminating because they range from the mainstream and mundane to the culturally specific to the OMG they do not do that! You might be surprised, for example, that getting your ears pierced or practicing body building is considered body modification, but technically, that's what those are.

Culturally specific practices of body mods include the old Chinese practice of foot binding or Kayan women with stacked neck rings. And then there are modern body modifications I'd rather not think too much about: scrotal implants, eyeball tattooing, tongue-splitting, and the baffling practice of trepanation, or drilling a hole into the skull.

We live in a world where people have plastic surgery to conform to certain ideals of beauty, so even though I would never have a saline inflation put in my forehead to look like I have a bagel in it (and I would probably gasp if I saw someone who did), I think there's something interesting about body modifications to debeautify or to look nonhuman (like the horns or wings you can get through plastic surgery to look like devils or angels).

Is all this too freaky for you, or do you think it's cool?

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