[Reading this in-depth study presupposes knowledge of the content presented in the cultural test relating to this practice].

Photo by *christopher* from San Francisco, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In Western society, tattoos are generally personal choices, while we are very aware of the need to cover nudity in public and see it as a cultural imperative. Conversely, in other contexts, covering nudity is not considered necessary, and certain types of body markings, such as scarifications or tattoos, are cultural imperatives and one does not conceive of a person without these marks.
Being aware of the existence of 'cultural imperatives' allows us to understand how any management of the body is culturally defined and closely linked to its public presentation. Indeed, the body is a language, a sign, a means of expression that reveals different messages. These messages implicitly convey the social and cultural interaction of societies and the individual, and the presentation of the body takes the form of a procedure for the manifestation of information, the most important of which are personal identity, social identity and ascription and membership of certain groups.

The human body is, therefore, a situs of representation of the social and cultural events that take place around it, and is a biologically changeable unit that, in contact with its environment, is subject to different meanings that are important for social communication. In this sense, sexual differences between men and women themselves are not only due to predetermined biological factors, but also to the influence of social and cultural factors. If biology explains sex singularities, social and cultural reality explains the construction of gender identity through the manifestations of the body. Bodies tell stories, and all the concerns, desires, beliefs, hopes and fears of social groups are managed in it. For this very reason, the body changes shape, undergoes a change of identity during its existence - sometimes almost a complete metamorphosis, like that of the men of the Borana, Mursi and Bume populations, who have as many scarifications on their skin as the number of men they have killed in battle or the number of dangerous animals they have slaughtered. In the body, therefore, everything is placed in terms of identity, with a greater or lesser degree of symbolism, but nevertheless with an important social value.
The body thus functions as a symbol of society, and most of the prejudices that exist around body modification practices are often rooted in society's conception of the body: used only for functional or practical purposes, such as reproduction, or for the expression of defined aesthetic canons. One of the reasons why in our Western culture there is prejudice against people with bodily modifications is because there is a prototype of what is included in the concept of beauty, and these practices are far removed from the models of behaviour and aesthetics that have been socially established as adequate. At the same time, however, in Western society and culture, one can observe certain types of body modifications that are collectively accepted, such as cosmetic surgeries, which are viewed by the majority of the population without any kind of repudiation or threat, showing that some modifications are socially accepted and others are not.
Many cultures in Africa show us that individual identity is a social identity; therefore, these modification practices go beyond the mere transformation of the body, but have something deeper, such as the fact that the subject is able to find his or her identity, and thus his or her position in society, through changes made to his or her body. Moreover, carrying out these practices is another way for the subject to feel good about himself: just as some people undergo cosmetic surgery to feel beautiful, the same applies to those who practice body modification.