The Decorated Body By France Borel Summary

For this assignment, I will respond to prompt one which illustrates the art of division rather than classification displayed in “The Decorated Body” written by France Borel. The Belgian author’s “The Decorated Body” was published the year of 1994 in the Parabola. Ms. Borel’s interest derived from her studying piercing, tattooing, plastic surgery, and other alterations to the human body. In this analysis, I will divide body modifications from France Borel’s essay into three parts-- body deformation, tattooing, and cultural validities.

There are various ways to display body modifications, where body deformation may be one. Author France Borel claims that” American Indian cradleboards crushed the skull to flatten it; the Mangbetus of Africa

Borel establishes in her essay “At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Father Laurent de Lucques noted that any young girl of the Congo who was not able to bear the pain of scarification and who cried so loudly that the operation had to be stopped was considered “good for nothing” (Cuvelier 144)” proclaimed by the author which is pinpointed in Paragraph 7 Ln. 1-4. The foregoing assertion declares that the Congo society uses body modifications to identify or distinguish whether the Congo woman is worthy of anything. My perception of the excerpt constitutes the more pain the woman can take determines how worthy she would be to her future husband. In the following sentence, the author states, “That is why, before marriage, men would check to see if the pattern traced on the belly of their intended bride was beautiful and well-detailed” recalled in Paragraph 7 Ln. 4-6 supports my perception because the excerpt demonstrates the connotation body modifications have in the Congo culture. An extenuating example is recalled in Paragraph 6 Ln. 3-5 “Tribal incisions behind the ears of Chad men rendered the skin” as smooth and stretched as that of a drum.” The women would laugh at any man lacking these incisions, and they would never accept him as a husband” which elucidates the importance of these bodily modifications into the cultural society of Chad people. Without these body modifications, men in the Chad community possess no moral standards fitting the criteria of a woman considering marriage and were bound for