Marks of Mystery

Discusses why people have scars. Usual reaction to scars; Theorists' explanations for severe scarring; Scars and sex.

By Elizabeth Austin, published on July 01, 1999

Many young body modifiers maintain they're trying to connect themselves to humanity's tribal history, now lost in American civilization. "They see themselves as getting back to some kind of essentialism," says Daniel Wojcik, Ph.D., an associate professor of folklore at the University of Oregon and author of Punk and Neo-Tribal Body Art (University Press of Mississippi, 1995). "They learn about scarring practices in another culture, and then have themselves scarred as a rite of passage." Some, as Romanienko suggests, are primarily motivated by the shock value of their flashy scars. But many neotribalists are more secretive about their body adornments, scarring themselves for personal reasons, not political ones.

"The meanings are very diverse," Wojcik says. "It's dangerous, it's sexy. For some it's an esthetic impulse. Others attribute some transcendent significance to the act, and find some kind of altered state of consciousness that's probably related to the pain involved and the endorphin rush that follows it. It certainly seems to be profoundly meaningful for them." For his book, Wojcik interviewed one unemployed Seattle youth named Perry Farrell, who later went on to fame in the rock bands Jane's Addiction and Porno for Pyros. Farrell's scars and piercings were inspired by photographs he saw in National Geographic. For Farrell, the scars were part of a self-made coming-of-age rite. "He told me, 'I need to become a man,'" Wojcik says. "He told me how painful it was, and how he felt transformed afterward."

The trouble is, it's hard to tell where fashionable body modification ends and pathological self-mutilation begins, especially when an individual turns to intentional wounding to mark an emotionally charged life event. "If you've suffered some kind of abuse, this is a way to acknowledge that in some kind of physical way," Wojcik observes. "Then it becomes a ritual, meaningful event. You're responding to a spiritual crisis, and you fortify yourself through these ancient forms of body modification." However, one person's ritual cleansing is another person's Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

To Favazza, the distinction is the scar's meaning to its owner--its story. "I define self-mutilation as something that derives from individual psychopathology, the product of loss of control," he says. "You can make a case that when you're symbolically reenacting what was done to you, you're controlling it."

Living with Scars

For the millions of Americans with scars left by accident or surgery, it might seem there's no debate about their meaning or symbolism--only the problem of trying to adjust to a highly visible, permanent and often disfiguring mark. However, Rumsey has found that even with unintended scars, their context plays a critical part in the emotional response of both bearer and viewer. "People who have a story find it much easier to cope," Rumsey says. "We often hear about people who get injured in war, or while saving somebody They do really well, and come out confident enough to deal with it, if it's a story they can happily tell that people want to know."

In fact, Rumsey's research indicates that psychological factors are the best predictors of a patient's response to a new scar. "You can't predict the effect of scarring from the size or type of disfigurement," she declares. "Some people get very upset about very minor marks." Instead, patients' future adjustment depends partly on their previous attitudes about physical appearance. "Prior experience and expectation tends to play a part," Rumsey says.

Some patients' attitudes are deeply affected by media depictions of people with scars. "In movies, the ones who have scars tend to be the baddies," Rumsey notes. That's a particularly important issue for children, who tend to be more vulnerable to such messages. Gender also plays a role; a poll by Rejuveness, marketer of alternative scar remedies, found that 65% of women said they were self-conscious about their scars, compared with 35% of men.

But the key factors seem to be the person's self-esteem and social skills, Rumsey believes. In her research, she's found that when people with scars are friendly, relaxed and outgoing, they can overcome strangers' initial recoil.

Rumsey began her studies by looking at the impact of scars on basic social interactions. At a first encounter, she says, "I found that people stand about a foot farther away if you've got a disfigurement." That simple fact alone has an enormous impact on any social interaction, she says. "If you take a good step backward, it changes the feeling between the two people, so it's less personal and more distant."

She also found that visible scars had an enormous impact on others' basic helping behaviors. In one study, she and her colleagues posed as market researchers, asking consumers to fill out a questionnaire. Not surprisingly, they found consumers were initially most likely to cooperate with attractive researchers. When the researchers wore artificial scars, they found that significantly fewer people approached them--but those who did offered more help than those who approached unmarked people. "We found that if you could get over that initial approach, people would compensate quite strongly for it."