Conformity In Western Sub Culture

Jane, (2015, pg 36) mentioned that in addition to tattoos, body modifiers embrace the rituals and adornments of indigenous groups, and invented many of their own. The globalisation of these tribal practices don’t necessarily make it more tolerable within today’s western subcultures, as there is still a lack of understanding and a reluctance to acknowledge the difference between what is tradition in outside cultures and what is non-conformity in western society. The westerners manage to take the culture of these tribes and develop the traditions in their own ways creating a new subculture outside of the culture in which they originated. Westerners also use body modifications as a means to have control over themselves and their bodies, and often

This contrasts to the social systems set by the rest of the world. With that being said, ‘normal’ societal principles are said to involve “a set of rituals – cleansing, grooming, applying makeup, dressing, decorating in various ways – which are designed to help people conform to the conventions of the places they go into, or alternatively, to ‘stand out’, to look and be different” (Gelder, 2007, Pg. 122).

These habits are carried out in today’s modern society and are inevitable to human nature, however different methods of self-adornment allow certain individuals to go against what is considered to be the ‘norm’, generating a sense of rebellion and creating the concept of subcultures (Zambrano, 2012, pg 39).

According to Jane, (2015, pg 36) with diverse subdivision groups such as rockers, gangs, hipsters and body modification enthusiasts making a distinguishable visual impact on today’s contemporary civilisation, Alexis Petridis (2014) argues that in today’s modern culture it is difficult to determine the existence of subcultures anymore as “they catch people's imagination, get appropriated by mainstream culture then die away”. This suggests that modern subcultures are being considered as more conventional, as the followings of each specific group have expanded on a worldwide

130) in the late eighteenth century, happened to be appropriated by the western societies as a way to create a cross-cultural link between the indigenous society and their western counterparts. Furthermore, given the notion that western individuals adapted the ritual of decorating their bodies in a personalised manner, it is widely considered to be an attempt to produce ‘non-normativity as opposed to conformity’ to the western nation (Gelder, 2007).

In addition to this, one might argue that even though the new age culture accepted and duplicated the body art of the Polynesian natives, their tattoos will represent tribal history (DeMello, 2014, pg 56). This makes those enthusiasts, who wear tattoos on their bodies ‘not only anachronistic but inauthentic’ (Thomas, 2005). This arguable topic, stated by Nicholas Thomas, raises the dispute of whether tribal tattoos signify belief or are they simply an aesthetic marking indorsed by the