Deborah Lipp

So, Suffolk County, New York (that’s Long Island) is considering a ban on certain forms of body modification.

There’s several things wrong with this story. First, They are fairly consistent in confusing the phrase “body art” with the phrase “body modification” (see the headline of the linked article; I heard the same error on the radio). Body art is decorating the body, either temporarily with things like henna, or permanently with tattoos. Some piercings which tend to be temporary (like an eyebrow piercing, which will close up pretty much as soon as you remove the jewelry) might also fall under the category of body art. Body modification is changing the shape of the body, with branding, tongue-splitting, scarification, etc. You can lump the two together, but they’re fairly different, and there are many tattooed people who don’t do the piercing thing (like me), and vice versa.

The reason this is important, obviously, is that it bespeaks an ignorance about the procedures they’re going after. Legislation rooted in ignorance, that always works!

But let’s keep looking at this:

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