How strange - I think that article has been heavily edited. I distinctly remember about a year ago, the very same article left many questions unresolved. I was left with the impression there might be a weird rare disease, or maybe not. Now it simply slaps down the lid with, “mental illness - next question?”
EDIT: It just occurred to me to wonder if that thread is sterile? Because that could turn into one nasty infection.
Calling a harmless hobby you’re not into “mentally disturbed” is about as hysterically shallow and entitled as saying a shitty Michael Bay movie “raped your childhood.”
Not really, unless she screws up.
My high school once did some sort of school pride thing where they handed out a little blue ribbon to every student in homeroom, along with a pin to pin it to our shirts. Being a transgressive weirdo, I quickly discovered that most people weren’t really interested and would give me their ribbons if I asked, and by lunchtime I’d assembled a complete bandolier and hat. On further experimentation, I discovered that I could carefully slide a pin under the very top layer of dead skin and attach ribbons to my arms, freaking out the normos without actually pricking or hurting myself, not even if it caught on something and was torn free.
That’s what this lady is doing. She’s not piercing living skin, only the outer layer of dead cells. Done carefully, it should be far less invasive than even a professional ear piercing.
Gotta say, I’m wondering if I can still do this. If the results are robust enough, with some surgical silk and a fine enough needle, I could have the start of a really gross Halloween costume. 
I was going to say something like “As someone who lives in chronic pain, I’d love to trade places and give it to someone who just gets off on it.” But she said it doesn’t really hurt her.
Yeah looking at it I could see that she was just going through skin that isn’t going to have a lot of nerve endings, or draw blood.
Still it made me wince.
Morgollans was officially dismissed as quackery a couple years ago.
But a couple weeks ago I had a weird fiber come out of sore on the bridge of my nose. I pulled it out, and it grew back in 48 hours. It felt like a splinter. It came off when I touched it on the way to the post office.
I’m with you that it isn’t anymore inherently crazy than any other body mod. I think people freaking out and calling her mentally ill are just dull 'burbanites whose greatest thrill is two glasses a wine while watching reality TV. Is she a weirdo? Probably, but most interesting people are. If you are not a little weird you are almost certainly a lot boring.
…all that said, while I find most body modification either attractive or at the very worst neutral, that is… ick. The hind brain is screaming at the top of its lungs that her hands are covered in plague and must be avoided at all cost.
One could argue that a lot of art is some kind of self abuse.
I still do it on occasion at work for shits-n-giggles…
Pff to the haters.
If you think anyone gives a shit for your opinion when you disparage this kind of art, which features a worthy political dimension, you betray that you consider art to be a decorative, non-confrontational irrelevance or something.
And if you concede that one of the functions of art is to piss people off and start arguments, you’re kind of paradoxically contradicting yourself when you opine that some bit of art has no right to exist (provided it has something to say beyond ‘please make me a star and drown me in cash’ - even then, a hint of self-conscious irony is enough to redeem it).
Yeah, it’s initially somewhat confronting; seems like an apt vehicle for the concept to me.
Hey, thank god you’re here. Right on.
Also I really dig the wood/leather sculptures on her site, they’re ace: http://www.elizabennett.co.uk/interior-objects-text
I used to do something similar when I was a teenager. It wasn’t painful at all, and only left tiny scratches if they tore out.
Accidentally stitching through my finger with a sewing machine, though… that was really painful.
And in your callous dismissal of those who dare not see the world in the same way you do, you prove your pretentiousness to be as (in)valuable as theirs.
Oh, touche… pfff.
Instead of snootily dismissing me on the basis of my tone, how about you address the substance, if you can? That crap is incoherent; logically inconsistent.
My pretentiousness, my exclusive devaluing of the other, yeah right.
I’m saying fuck the haters, this art is worth a damn even if you can’t see it.
Don’t spout utter fucking filth like that; it’s worthy of the US State Dept in its brazen hypocrisy.
You pretend to be some arbiter of what is or isn’t worthwhile art, if you actually have your brain in gear enough to be disagreeing with my stance on the actual subject here.
I never offered any opinion, nor defended, nor disagreed with, any opinions of the art in question. I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy you displayed by your dismissal of somebody else’s opinion, because they did not value something in the same manner you did.
Eliza Bennett? If you think this is bad, you should see what she did to Mr. Darcy.
Are we veering in to “Human Centipede” territory with that? 
