Body modification
Body modification (or body alteration) is the permanent or semi-permanent deliberate altering of the human body for non-medical reasons, most often religious or aesthetic. It can range from the socially acceptable decoration (e.g., pierced ears on women in North American society), to religiously mandated (e.g., circumcision in a number of cultures) to the rebellious (e.g., nostril piercings in punk subculture). Opponents of these practices call them disfigurement or mutilation.
Nearly every human society practises some type of body modification in its broadest definition, from Maori tattoos to Victorian corsets to modern breast implants.
One controversial form of body modification is people attempting to resemble another race, such as Asians having their epicanthic folds modified to resemble Caucasian eyes or skin lightened with dyes, or African-Americans straightening their hair.
"Disfigurement" and "mutilation" are names used by opponents of body modification to describe certain types of modifications, especially non-consensual ones. Those terms are used fairly uncontroversially to describe the victims of torture, who have endured damage to ears, eyes, feet, genitalia, hands, noses, teeth, and/or tongues, including amputation, burning, flagellation, piercing, skinning, and wheeling. "Genital mutilation" is also used somewhat more controversially to describe certain kinds of socially prescribed modifications to the genitals, such as circumcision, female circumcision, and castration.
Body art is body modification for the purposes of art.
Some futurists believe that eventually humans will pursue body modification for technological reasons, with permanently implanted devices to enhance mental and physical capabilities, becoming cyborgs. For the substantial number of people with heart pacemakers and brain implants such as cochlear implants and electrical brain stimulators for Parkinson's disease, this is already a reality.