Encylopedia of Body Adornment.pdf - Print My Tattoo

I
IMPLANTS
Implants are items that are surgically inserted into the body, sometimes for medical
purposes but increasingly today, for aesthetic purposes. Medical implants include
pacemakers and artificial joints, while the most common implant used for aesthetic
purposes (and sometimes medical purposes as well) is the breast implant.
The oldest and most commonly used implant is the breast implant. Used since
the end of the ninteenth century to augment the size of a woman’s breasts, the
earliest implants were made with a woman’s own fat. Later substances included
ivory, paraffin, rubber, polyester, and teflon. In the 1950s, silicone was injected
directly into thousands of women’s breasts in order to increase their size, resulting
in granulomas and hardening of the breasts.
Modern breast implants are made with a silicone shell filled with either silicone
gel or saline liquid. Almost 300,000 breast implant surgeries were performed in
2005, and they are becoming more common among women of all ages and socioeconomic
classes.
Today, cosmetic surgeons are using the technologies developed for breast implants
to augment a number of other locations on the body on both men and
women, including the buttocks, calves, pectoral muscles, and biceps.
In the body modification community, the term implant generally refers to
a number of procedures, mostly performed by body modification practitioners
rather than doctors, such as subdermal implants, transdermal implants, scrotal
implants, and genital beading. These are still quite rare and are not accepted in
mainstream society, and are often known as artistic implants.
A subdermal implant refers to the insertion of an object under the skin so that
the shape of the implant is clearly visible through the skin itself. Most implants
are made of teflon or silicon and are carved into decorative shapes such as stars or
other simple designs. They are primarily used for decorative purposes. Body artist
and piercer Steve Haworth is known to have popularized the use of such implants
in the 1990s. The artist generally uses a scalpel to create an incision, then uses a
spatula-like tool to open a pocket under the skin. The implant is then inserted into
the pocket, and the wound is sutured together.
The horn implant, first performed by Steve Haworth, is a subdermal implant of
(usually) two teflon bumps into the forehead, giving the appearance of a devil or
goat or other animal. The first horn implants were inserted into Enigma in 1996.
Subdermal implants can be stretched just like regular piercings, so, for example,
a person can receive small horn implants, and once they have healed, have them
removed and replaced with larger horns.