Читать книгу Introducing Anthropology - Laura Pountney - Страница 110

In both the past and the present, the body has been reshaped in many culturally relevant ways, from traditional foot-binding in China to more recent cosmetic surgeries in Western society. Humans modify their bodies for many reasons. Some religious traditions believe that marking the body is a corruption of the perfect human form designed by God, while many others consider the undecorated body to be not fully human. For some, body decoration is something that distinguishes humans from the animal world or from other humans in different cultures.

The body can be either temporarily modified (for example, body-painting, make-up, toiletries, hairstyles) or permanently modified (tattooing, scarification, reshaping and piercing). Below are three examples of body modification in different cultures and different times.

body modification The deliberate altering of the human anatomy