6 Why Do People Decorate Their Bodies?

People decorate their bodies for many reasons. They also decorate in different ways. Some groups of people have decorated their bodies for thousands of years.Other people want to look attractive. Other people want to belong to a group.

Some people decorate their lips, ears, and neck to be beautiful. For example, in Africa,the Surmese women wear a plate in their bottom lip. How do they do this? First, a mother makes a hole in her daughter's bottom lip.Then she stretches the lip.Then she puts a small plate in it. As the daughter gets older, she puts in bigger and bigger plates. Other people in Africa put plates in their ears. They want the bottom of their ears to hang to their shoulders.

The Pa Daung women in Myanmar are called “giraffe women.”They have very long necks, like giraffes. The women wear metal rings to stretch their necks. They wear more rings as they get older. Their necks become longer. Their necks are sometimes two or three times the normal size.Some women die if they take off the rings.

People also decorate their teeth to be beautiful. Many Americans and Europeans like white, straight teeth. They spend a lot of money to fix and clean their teeth. This is not true in other parts of the world. In east Africa, some people pull out their bottom teeth. They want their top teeth to stick out.In some parts of Asia,women used to paint their teeth black to look beautiful. Today, young people do not do this.In Indonesia,boys and girls file their teeth.A person with filed teeth will have a good and healthy life.

People around the world always liked tattoos. Europeans learned about tattoos around 1770. A famous English explorer named Captain Cook went to Tahiti. He saw people there with tattoos. The Tahitians called the decoration tatou. From this, we get the word tattoo. The Tahitians taught Cook and his sailors how to make tattoos. The sailors returned to England, and other people liked their tattoos. Soon tattoos spread to the rest of Europe. Many sailors still have tattoos.

Today, many different types of people have tattoos. For some people, body decorations are attractive. For other people, they are strange.