My Findings on Body Art and Modification

Branding is a popular way of marking things, like cattle. Some extreme fraternities even apply brands to their members for initiation purposes. But now they are becoming more and more popular as a voluntary form of decorating ones self.

For anyone that doesn’t know branding is when a hot, or in some rare cases cold, Iron is used to heat a persons skin making a permanent, hopefully raised, scar in some sort of design or shape.

In some gangs and prisons, people will get these instead of the more traditional method of tattooing to initiate a person. Like I said before some extreme fraternities use brands to initiate members. Former President George W. Bush is rumored to have been apart of the Delta fraternity at Yale while they where allegedly branding the backsides of members with the shape of a Delta. Branding was also seen in the movie Jackass II when Bam Margera received a brand a penis on his butt. Also branding was seen in the movie Jarhead as a Marine initiation process. Brandings have also been used to associate slaves with their owners if they where lucky enough to escape but unfortunately be caught.



While the hot iron method is very common now a person can get a brand with a laser in a somewhat surgical process. The cold method is the as the hot iron just intensely frozen cold is pressed onto the skin to make the design.



The pain is so to not be as bad as one would think, it is mostly psychological. The real pain is said to be during the healing process, especially if the body part is touched or moved. The aftercare is quite basic, many people say to just leave it alone. Other people will irritate the brand by using rough brushes or similar things but this can cause uneven rising of the scar. Healing takes 2 to 6 months and during the healing the brand will go back and forth between looking good and gross until fully healed. Some people with tattoo over or around the brand once fully healed to give it a more apparent look.

As with any body art or modification have a brand done by an experienced person, not your fraternity brother while drunk.