I don’t have a problem with body modifications (unless you want to tell me in detail about getting your tattoo- I’m needle-phobic). But the only body modifications I’m at all interested in now are ones that will save me time and effort. I’d love to get my armpit or leg hair removed, so I wouldn’t have to worry about shaving it. Insurance really should cover permanent leg hair removal for people as nearsighted and clumsy as me. I’ve cut myself shaving my legs too many times to count.
A couple of people in my office with the ear thingies.
Of course, my term for this Age is “The Carny Decade”. I’m old enough to remember when only carny folk, sailors and undesirables had such piercings, tatoos and shaved heads. I’m so looking forward to 10-20 years from now when we can look back at this period in the same manner we now look at people from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, thinking “what the fuck were they thinking wearing that???”
Am I the only one who thinks it is kind of funny that the “fix” for people with large gauge holes looking to become more professional is surgery that in at least some cases is not attractive or desirable for anyone? If I come in to a job with mutilated earlobes that I enjoy, I’m unprofessional. But if I have mutilated earlobes that nobody likes, it’s fine.
Except that I got my first tattoo and my septum pierced 13 years ago, and I was already late to the game. Body mods, as a fad, will fade some, but the general idea that anybody can decorate their bodies in that way without it being just for bikers and “undesirables” is here to stay for a while.
What is “well controlled feral hair”? Do I dare ask? 
I think it still has life as a class marker.
While it is now possible to have visible body mods aside from the traditional ear-piercings, and be middle-class, it still isn’t easy or very common to be middle-class and have visible body mods and/or tats.
Mind you, it isn’t though of as being for scary biker types alone anymore. Though there are serious differences in styles - piercings combined with arty, visible tats is one thing, pointing more to a slacker stereotype; discreet/coverable tats is another; and what I saw at my wife’s cousin’s wedding is yet a third - grim-faced recent eastern european immigrants with short hair and home-made prison tats (no piercings).
“What is the problem?” The lobe plugs.
A few – one of my supervisors over at the Science Center had his ears stretched. Not QUITE as big as quarters, maybe? (He’s the guy to the far left, with the long hair and the Abe Lincoln beard – Budd. From what one of my full time coworkers told me, he was able to quit and play with his band full time. Nice guy)
I’m pretty meh on the whole thing. They’re your ears, go for it. The guy who pierced my nose had ones the size of my fist. On the other hand, there was the dude I saw downtown with his ear lobes down past his chin – that was over doing it!
As for looking like catbutt: from what I gather, you have to stretch them out gradually. They start looking like that if you go too big too soon. You just go to a slightly larger gauge. Cite