Some days I wake up and it feels like the world is just on a wonk. Some days you wake up and it feels like everything’s a bit bonkers, a bit surreal and I feel like I’m in a strange dream world. I must admit it happens to me often and I like to blame the chemicals they must be secretly putting in my Philadelphia extra light in order to make it so low in fat.
I don’t mind about the history of accessorising and the deeper reasons and psychology behind it but I kind of just assumed that it had something to do with accentuate a persons beauty, status or even to express aspects of their personality. I was happy with that fact and everything I’ve witnessed so far seemed to confirm this notion. Until this one fateful day (which was actually yesterday) when I walked past what I thought was a woman with a disfigured face. I had the usual pang of sympathy, guilt ridden interest and inexplicable anger towards what could have made her this way.
Before I could overt my gaze respectfully (horrified that she might think I was staring at her), she looked me right in the eye and smiled. Beaming all through herself as she looked back at me, I struggled to figure out why she was smiling at me. Did I know her? Was she mocking me? Did I have something on my face? And it very quickly began to dawn on me that her face wasnt actually disfigured, she just had something snagged between her lip and her eyebrow. Like a very thin piece of gold somehow hooked onto the end of her eyebrow and down onto the edge of her lip. Before I knew what was happening the words had left my mouth “what’s that on your face?”. As a teenager having my nose pierced I loathed people who made those kinds of comments in reference to body jewellery and now, low and behold, I have become one! My first thought was one of sheer panic, how had I become so conservative? Had I always been such a square and just didn’t realise it? Or had the world simply moved on in hip-ness leaving me behind? But then I realised she was speaking and felt strangely compelled to listen.
So it transpires that there is a new wave of body jewellery that challenges the perception of traditional beauty and how accessorising well can enhance that. Now I’m all for blowing up outdated modes of thinking and moving forward into an all-encompassing utopia where beauty shines from within and people are appreciated for their peanut and not their shell. But would I actually wear something that distorted the shape of my face? I wouldn’t, of course I wouldn’t but plenty would and that’s when it dawned on me that people in their millions sign up for this sort of thing every day. Willingly paying through the nose to mutilate themselves in the name of beauty. Nips here, tucks there, till what is left is the Frankenstein monster of our nightmares and not the ‘Weird Science’ style goddess of our dreams.
Not that I’m judging anyone for having cosmetic surgery, I understand it’s a personal choice and that there are many reasons for them doing this, it’s just that sometimes it can go wrong and sometimes the result isn’t what the victim (er sorry, I mean the patient) intended. In the face of permanent bodily or facial adjustments, this jewellery doesn’t seem so bad. It can be removed and I guess ultimately it does make a statement, which fashion in general does strive to do.
andreannadais 