By Andy Jordan, Tech Live
You might call Dustin Allor different. After all, her baby has a Mohawk.
Allor, of Menlo Park, California, is a piercing and body modification expert and instructor who also owns an overprotective parakeet that barely speaks.
For a few days after Allor split her tongue using fishing line, she didn't speak either. It just hurt too damned much.
Why in the world would anyone split their tongue with fishing line? Tonight on "Tech Live," see why many young people are going under the knife -- and laser, in some cases -- for one of the more extreme body modifications available.
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"I just grew up hearing that my body was not my own," Allor says, "and it was very frustrating growing up not being able to do what I wanted with my body."
More and more young people are splitting their tongues. By most counts, a couple of thousand people have undergone the painful forking procedure, an extreme form of body modification that gives one a serpentine look.
Allor's method is called the "tie off," but some piercing shops are using scalpels to perform the procedure. It's done on the down-low, as piercing shops aren't normally allowed to perform such splittings. In the modification community there's fear of being seen as too edgy by local governments, which may seek to outlaw tongue-splitting, as some already have. In Illinois, the state legislature has approved a ban.
Also, tongue-splitting could be seen as a surgical procedure, causing problems for those who aren't licensed to do it. Piercing shops are also cautious about the "tie off" method, since it can cause excessive bleeding and requires cauterization to seal the cut.
Lasers set to stun
About 5 percent of those splitting their tongues are going to an oral surgeon who uses an argon laser, according to Steve Hayworth, a controversial tongue splitter based in Phoenix. He's done hundreds of tongue-splittings with a scalpel and says the laser is the most traumatic and barbaric of methods, though there's hardly consensus on that in the body manipulation community. Everyone who performs such modifications has a different opinion on the matter.
However, it doesn't make much sense to one traditional surgeon we talked to.
"An argon laser is just not as powerful as a C02 laser," says Dr. Chuck Meltzer, a head and neck surgeon for Kaiser Permanente. "I don't think it really makes a difference as long as you can... stop the bleeding afterward."
Bleeding is the central issue with tongue-splitting, aside from the obvious pain. "Most of the blood supply comes to the tongue along the side, so along the midline you have less potential for bleeding," Meltzer says. "But still the tongue is a well-vascularized place, and bleeding can be an issue."
Lasers can cause swelling and take longer to split, but they spill less blood. Still, lasers can seem barbaric even to those who welcome the ritual of pain.
A cutting debate
Lasers might be great for many surgical procedures, but professional piercer Seth Cameron from Murphysboro, Tennessee, still prefers to do splittings the old-school way. He has split around 10 tongues himself, mostly using wire and scalpel. He says lasers usually aren't a good way to do the job.
"They call them lasers, but they shoot electrons off the end, and that excites the cells and the cells vaporize and cauterize in the process," he says. "It hurts. There's burning of tissue."
Though some people have tried to legislate tongue-splitting out of existence, body modification teacher Fakir, based in the San Francisco Bay area, says outlawing it could backfire and cause young people to become even more defiant.
Fakir says, The young people who do modifications have come to the conclusion that [these laws are] bullshit. 'I'm not going to accept it. I own my body, I live in this body. The only person who owns this body is the one who lives in it.'"
Spiritual, historical body-mods
Fakir, director of Fakir Intensives, a piercing and branding school, grounds all of his body manipulation seminars in a cultural, historical, and spiritual context. He coined the term "modern primitive," a basis for body modification that accounts for people manipulating their bodies because of natural responses to tribal, primitive urges.
He says ancient Mayans split their tongues "to invoke certain gods, healing spirits, and energies." He says modern American culture hasn't recognized tongue-splitting and other body manipulation, despite mainstream articles in such publications as National Geographic.
"To our kids doing this now, I hope they understand that this is not a new phenomenon," Fakir says. "This is something other people did and they did it for very specific reasons."
Seth Cameron says he split his tongue partly for the spiritual journey. But he says there's that other side benefit.
"Kissing with it is incredible. I wouldn't trade it for the world," he says of his forked tongue. "And oral sex definitely has a new spin."
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