In fact, he adds, anthropologists report that among some groups,
women with scarred bellies are considered more sexually demanding--and
therefore more likely to conceive. A decorated belly also draws attention
to a woman's waist-to-hip ratio, which signals youthfulness and potential
fertility Similarly, males scar the face, shoulders and arms to point up
their strength and sexual maturity The sexual content of the scars can be
explicit; one Yoruba scarification design for the upper thigh is called
"finish at the vagina."
The Western world's apparent immunity to such sexually charged
scarring is historically quite recent, insists former anthropology
student Raven Rowanchilde, author of the article "Male Genital
Modification: A Sexual Selection Interpretation," published in the
journal Human Nature in 1996. "Westerners are suffering from the smoke
damage of Platonic ideals," she says. It was only after Plato embraced
the beauty of the idealized, natural human form that the Western world
rejected such ancient forms of adornment.
"We went from tribal groups using these marks to symbolize lineage
and status to having this pure, untouched body," says Rowanchilde, who
now runs a body design studio in Toronto. "The mark of civilization
became no marks at all." Judeo-Christian tradition embraced the unmarked
body to distinguish itself from surrounding pagans. Leviticus clearly
warns: "They shall not ...make any cuttings in their flesh."
Yet scars can still carry a potent sexual message for Westerners.
At the beginning of this century, upper-class Austrian men created a cult
of the dueling scar, says historian Kevin McAleer, Ph.D., author of
Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin-de-Siecle Germany (Princeton University
Press, 1997). "The renommier schrniss, or bragging scar, was a mark of
social status," McAleer notes. "It indicated you had been to university,"
where dueling societies were critical to social life.
These duelists subscribed to an ethos of exaggerated masculinity,
in which skilled swordplay and fleetness of foot were less important than
stolid fearlessness. Using saber-type weapons, the antagonists--wearing
body padding and iron goggles--faced each other for dozens of brief
rounds, with each man defending against five whacking strokes and then
taking five cuts of his own. "This wasn't footwork, thrust and parry,"
McAleer says. "It was a mechanical robotic sort of motion," which the
opponent would try to fend off until his endurance failed.
"The idea was to stand your man and show courage--not to inflict a
wound, but to be wounded," he says. "That's the very strange part of
it--the true winner was he who walked away with a nice juicy scar, to
show that he'd stood the test. The point was not to get the other guy,
but to show that you could take it. You'd get these guys who looked like
they'd walked into a propeller. It was pretty gnarly, but the guys were
damn proud to look that way."
Women responded ardently to these proudly displayed scars, which
the combatants often soaked with beer or stuffed with horsehair, to
increase their size and prominence. "The scars showed you had courage and
education, and were good husband material," McAleer says. "Anyway, a lot
of these kids were rather good-looking, and you didn't have to ruin your
whole face in dueling. The scars usually accumulated on the left side of
the face, so from the right profile, he still looked good. And even if it
was an ugly, knotted scar, women were attracted by everything it implied,
and the pride with which the wearer bore it." The cult of the dueling
scar has faded, but hasn't entirely disappeared; Professor Ferguson,
whose research focuses on scarless healing, claims he was once contacted
by an Austrian who actually wanted his modest dueling scar made
bigger.
Beautiful But Flawed
Although Americans have never made a cult of scar worship, we tend
to find some scars strangely fascinating, particularly if they add
character to an otherwise conventionally attractive face. In 1986, Maria
Hanson was just one of a thousand pretty models trying to make their
fortune in New York City. Then her landlord, angry when she spurned his
sexual advances, hired two thugs who used a razor blade to slice her face
apart. The attack made headlines--and, paradoxically, the fine network of
scars it left on her face briefly made Hanson a media star.
"I imagine it has to do with the background level of facial
attractiveness," Rumsey speculates. "If someone is pretty good-looking
and they have a scar, I think the unconscious assumption would be that
they got scarred in a way that wasn't their fault, because they were
terribly brave. I think there's something about those with extreme levels
of beauty that can make other people stereotype them as fairly shallow.
Maybe a scar makes them a bit more human and desirable."
A scar on an otherwise flawless face fills us with intense
curiosity; we long to hear the sexy or sad story behind it, and we feel
slightly disappointed if the story is dull. One perfect example is a
scene in the 1988 movie Working Girl, in which actress Melanie Griffith
asks Harrison Ford about the (real) scar on his chiseled chin. "Some guy
pulled a knife in Detroit," he boasts, then admits the truth: "I was 19
and I thought it'd be cool to have a pierced ear. My girlfriend stuck the
needle through and I heard this pop and fainted and hit my chin on the
toilet." (According to the many Web pages celebrating Ford's scar, the
real story is even more mundane: he hit his chin during a minor traffic
accident.)
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