The first time I connected my own body modifications to sexualization and fetishization was when I was 13. I came out initially (and way too quickly for my taste, in retrospect) the month I was turning 14. I remember I specifically felt nervous around the announcement because I had also just recently softened up my parents into letting me get a tongue piercing at a local studio after my birthday.
It was just a piercing I aesthetically liked. I already had a few piercings, and I had wanted this one for years. It was also the only piercing I kept from that time, nearly 14 years, until last year, when I split my tongue.
I didn’t want to tell my parents that I liked boys because I knew how sexualized the conversations around tongue piercings can be, especially for people who identify the way I did at the time, as a gay male. I remember when I came out, I explicitly told my mom that a tongue piercing was an aesthetic preference and that it had nothing to do with my sexuality because it worried me so much.
It’s a little jarring to think back to that time, that even as a child, I had the foresight to understand how my love for body modification, for my own body affirmation, was going to be sexualized by others, whether I liked it or not.
I also would be lying if I said, as an adult, I didn’t embrace this as an inevitability to some extent, sometimes even taking ownership over, or reclaiming, being fetishized, knowing that it’s going to happen regardless. I am heavily tattooed and modified, and it’s generally one of the first things prospective dates or hookups call to my attention.
Knowing this is bound to happen, of course it kind of feels objectifying when it’s clear people are hyper-focused on my tattooed body and not the person inside it. Sometimes I feel a sensitive part of myself whispering, “But what about me? Are you only interested in my aesthetic, my outer shell? I’m so much more interesting than my body.”
Then I dissect a little more the nature of these interactions, heavily based in first impressions, appearances. Maybe I’m being fetishized to some degree, but maybe my exterior draws people in? Maybe I’m interesting, a refreshing deviation from the norm?
I really do try to own it, if it’s going to happen—to kind of roll with it on my terms. My tattoos, my piercings, my body—they are sexy. They make me feel sexy.
We cannot control other people’s reactions to us; we can only control our responses, and I’ve basically accepted that there are plenty of people who accept body modification as part of the bigger picture of “me” and other people who see that as the sole part of me, or at least the only interesting part because it’s their sexual interest.
I’ve had folks pop into my TikTok livestream, among my regular followers who are genuinely interested in my work, humor, personhood, solely to ask if I have piercings “down there.” I received a Grindr message a couple months back that was plainly, “How does your tongue feel on a dick lol.”
I’ve known for a long time that my love of body modification was something that, especially among gay and queer men, would be sexualized. And, to be honest, I have a bit of a thing for modified people too, so while I am never as blunt as folks often are with me, I’ve mostly accepted it as part of my experience as a heavily modified, queer person.
It also taught me how to better approach people and not objectify them based on an element of their appearance I find arousing. I have my own preferences and fetishes, but, given my experience, I treat the physical attributes I might be drawn to in a person as an element of them, rather than reducing their entire existence to something I find sexy.
I also recognize that many people, specifically women and femmes, experience this type of thing all the time, just for existing in their bodies and gender, and as a person who is often male-assumed, I have the privilege of experiencing this objectification in relation to my modifications exclusively, not just my existence in general.
These decisions are personal, but regardless, they are on my body and inherently public. And I already know from experience, the folks worth keeping around are the ones who inherently want to dig deeper to learn about the person inside this skin.
