I have seen scarification on people before and wondered why would anyone want to hurt themselves; I mainly thought this because it seemed painful and, to me, did not look that attractive. Then I came across some pictures of women of Nuba and Tiv tribes from Africa that had scarification all over their bodies but it look rather different… I thought it looked quite pretty. Their complexion combined with the scarification was more of a pattern rather than one design. In both tribes, scarification is a representation of womanhood and power but is understood differently among both. For the Nuba, the process of scarification is done in stages of rites of passage. According to Faris, “...a young girl also receives an initial set of body scars on the first sign of approaching maturity when her breasts first start to appear (scars from the navel to the breasts...). Other more extensive scars are cut (now covering the entire torso) on initial menses, and a final set covering the back, the back of the legs, arms and neck, are cut after a woman weans her first child. This last set of scars signals sexual availability again after a long postpartum sexual restriction while the infant is nursed. The final set is regarded as a beauty necessity, and if a husband refuses to pay for the scarring specialist, a woman may seek a lover who will do so, and her first marriage will end. The scars on the woman's back are regarded as sexually pleasurable to her lovers” (Rowanchilde 1). I think it is fascinating that a woman is allowed to leave her husband and seek a lover to pay for the scars. This is true woman power. As for the Tiv women scars, “[Tiv men] value women with raised scars as mates because they consider scarified women more sexually demanding and therefore, more likely to bear more children. [in addition] the Tiv claim that raised scars stay sensitive for many years and they produce erotic sensations in both men and women when touched or stroked” (Rowanchilde 1). Viewing these two tribes and understanding the process has changed my mind about scarification. I still think it must be painful, and I do not think I would ever go through the process unnecessarily, but I see where it serves its purpose. For people who scar themselves without tribal reasons, they must have their own reasons and I will look at them with a new understanding now. If you would like to see pictures of what the scars look like this website has amazing pictures of the women.
http://www.randafricanart.com/Scarification_and_Cicatrisation_among_African_cultures.html
Work Cited
Rowanchilde, Raven. “Cross Cultural Body Modification: A literature Review”. Toronto 1993.
http://www.randafricanart.com/Scarification_and_Cicatrisation_among_African_cultures.html
Work Cited
Rowanchilde, Raven. “Cross Cultural Body Modification: A literature Review”. Toronto 1993.
1 comment:
Your blog did a good job of trying to understand something that you did not understand before. To many people, scarification is not something they would even dream of doing. It consists of purposely cutting oneself in order to make a design. You did a good job explaining why you did not understand it while showing what did make sense to you. These tribes that have scarification as a part of their culture, use it to serve a purpose and announce what stage of life a person is in. I think it is pretty cool how the two tribes use scarification as the same purpose, but with different meanings. I also wrote a blog on scarification, however mine focused more on Americans having it done and what it means to them. It is pretty interesting how our culture takes something that is so meaningful and traditional from another culture and puts a new meaning into it. However, this meaning is really individualized and specific to each person as opposed to the culture in which they found it which has a symbolic meaning. In my blog, I wrote about a woman who had the word freedom written on her leg in a scar. She said that everything in life could be taken away from her except her freedom. This scarification is very unique in that the majority of them are designs rather than words. I like how you focused on two specific tribes and what their scars mean to them.
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