Body Modification and the Documentary Modify

What is Body Modification?

Anthropologists explore body modification in relation to a variety of cultural practices. In “Enhancement Technologies and the Body” Linda Hole asserts, “Humans have always modified their bodies. What distinguishes these techniques is that bodies and selves become the objects of improvement work, unlike previous efforts in modernity to achieve progress through social and political institutions” (695). Steven W. Gangestad and Glenn J. Scheyd’s “The Evolution of Human Physical Attraction” explores the question, “can human standards of physical attractiveness be understood through the lens of evolutionary biology?” (523). And Rosemary A. Joyce examines the body as a “site of embodied agency” (139) that changes in response to individual and cultural experiences rather than remaining static. 

Anthropologist and museum curator Enid Schildkrout suggests that body art and the body modification it involves is universal. In fact, “There is no culture in which people do not, or did not, paint, pierce, tattoo, reshape, or simply adorn their bodies.” According to Shildkrout, “Body art communicates a person’s status in society; displays accomplishments; and encodes memories, desires, and life histories.” Body modification may be ephemeral, as with body painting, makeup and hairstyles. But it may also include more permanent changes, such as body shaping, scarification, tattooing, and piercing. Directed by Jason Gary and Greg Jacobson, the 2005 documentary Modify reinforces Shildkrout’s definition with images of the varied forms of modification and testimony from those who personally modify their bodies and the artists and surgeons who modify them. The documentary asserts that there are four reasons for body modification: aesthetics, sexual augmentation, shock value, and spirituality. For most of the experts documented in Modify, body modification is body art and includes hair color, ear piercing, and body building, as well as tattooing, body piercing, and plastic surgery.