麻豆传媒

Here鈥檚 how to split your tongue in two. One: have it pierced. Two: put a piece of fishing line through the hole. Three: pull.

That, at least, is how 20-year-old Dustin Allor of Menlo Park, California, did it in 1997, when tongue splitting was becoming popular. Nowadays it鈥檚 more usual to find a dentist or surgeon to do it for you. The results, though, are the same 鈥� a forked tongue with tips you can move independently.

As extreme as it sounds, tongue splitting is just one of dozens of types of body modification practised in the west today. The spectrum runs from the commonplace tattooing and piercing to savage 鈥渉eavy mods鈥� such as nipple removal, genital mutilation and amputation, often self-inflicted. Think of any part of the human body that can be stretched, pierced, mutilated or removed altogether, and someone, somewhere has done it.

Last year Shannon Larratt, founder and editor of the respected online fanzine BMEzine, posted an exhaustive questionnaire about body modification on a members-only section. Of more than 4700 people who responded, most were only pierced or tattooed, but 870 of the respondents reported having had some form of heavy modification.

The most common heavy mods revealed in the survey were genital modifications ranging from circumcision 鈥� female as well as male 鈥� to scrotal and labial stretching, glans splitting and relocation of the urethra. Decorative implants of various sorts are also popular, including some which are inserted under the skin. Branding, scarification and tongue splitting score highly. At the extreme, 30 people reported that they had been castrated, had their penis cut off or had voluntarily amputated an extremity such as a toe, hand or limb. Amputees are known on the scene as 鈥渘ullos鈥�.

What might motivate someone to do such a thing? Whatever it is, it is strongly felt. According to Mark Benecke, a psychologist at the University of Cologne in Germany, many of those involved will operate on themselves if they cannot get a professional surgeon to do the job. And finding help can be difficult: in the US it is illegal for surgeons to perform procedures that alter people鈥檚 bodies beyond what is deemed socially acceptable. In the BME survey, the majority of people with heavy mods reported doing it themselves.

鈥淪ome do it for aesthetic reasons, as a spiritual quest, or out of recklessness,鈥� says psychologist Armando Favazza of the University of Missouri in Columbia, who studies self-mutilation in all its forms. But he suspects that many are probably mentally ill. 鈥淚n the absence of a proper examination I can鈥檛 really speculate about what is wrong with them,鈥� he says. One obvious possibility is that they suffer from body dysmorphic disorder, a personality disorder characterised by extreme body dissatisfaction which has driven some people to seek medically sanctioned amputations.

Nearly 30 per cent of the respondents to the BMEzine survey rated their mental health as worse than average or very poor, and 17 per cent reported that they were taking prescription drugs for a mental health problem. However, there is no evidence that people with heavy modifications have worse mental health than the soft mod crowd; if anything, the opposite is true. And the majority of heavy modifiers said they were happier people as a result of their body modifications.

Sex can play a big part. Split tongues have an obvious utility and many of the genital modifications supposedly enhance sensation, in much the same way that piercings do. Even ultra-heavy modifications can have a sexual motivation. This year a team led by Richard Wassersug of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, surveyed 134 men who wanted to be castrated, or already were. Around 30 per cent said they found the idea of castration sexually exciting, while a similar number said they liked the cosmetic appearance it would achieve. Only 40 per cent said they wanted to be castrated to free themselves from uncontrollable sexual urges, which is the orthodox explanation for castration fantasies (Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol 33, p 433).

Having studied the scene and met many of its adherents, Benecke has come to the conclusion that body modification is often simply a lifestyle choice. In 1999, he published the first, and still apparently the only, case study. The subject was a 28-year-old New York woman who had a split tongue, extensive scarification, branding, tattoos and piercings. Her social circle consisted of other members of the body modification scene, but in other respects she was utterly normal. She had had a regular childhood, was psychologically stable and had an ordinary office job.

Eric Sprague, also known as Lizardman, is another disarmingly normal body modifier. Sprague is one of the world鈥檚 most heavily modified people and, unusually, he is willing to talk about it. He is tattooed all over his body and face, has a split tongue, multiple piercings, horn-shaped implants on his forehead, and sharpened teeth 鈥� all directed towards making him look like a lizard. He sees his motivations as unremarkable. 鈥淔irst and foremost it is an internal drive towards self-satisfaction,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he same thing that makes people exercise or style their hair a certain way.鈥� The lizard thing is a 鈥減ure, personal, aesthetic choice鈥�, he says. 鈥淚 chose a lizard for the same reason you chose the colour of your suit or car.鈥�