People always say, "never judge a book by its cover," but a first impression is a different story. When meeting a person for the first time image is everything, almost as if the person is a product. Although one cannot tell a book by its cover, we often look to physical appearance to give us clues about a person's sanity, morality, intelligence, and abilities. Because appearance can be a fairly reliable indicator of one's behavior, it is no surprise that in society physical image is very important. Today people can change any aspect of themselves; their clothing, hair, teeth, face, and body. Most of these changes are met with a level of tolerance, some more socially expectable than others. Taking action to change one's appearance is often approved or at least accepted as a way of retaining youth, keeping current with the times, or boosting of one's self-esteem. However, when a person chooses to make a radical change that may be quite original and or go against society's!.
standards, there is usually some sort of backlash. This is seen currently with the trend of body piercing, tattoos, branding, and other forms of body adornment. These forms of body adornment are seen by the larger part of Western society as mutilation to ones" self. More conservative people feel that the set rends are new and have never seen things such as these before. Therefore, assuming that these altercations to ones shell is wrong, immoral, and just plain destructive. However, such trends are not new, they are in fact a timely tradition commonly used throughout the ages. Body piercing, tattoos, and other forms of body ornamentation have been used for years among indigenous people globally. Inquiring the answers of why individuals in many societies may choose, for various reasons, to alter their appearance in specific ways and to suffer physical pain or social disapproval for doing produces many answers.