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Ransom Riggs
Don’t call them freaks
by Ransom Riggs - December 20, 2006 - 9:42 AM

Call them “body modification artists.” Building on yesterday’s theme, which all started with us thinking too much about the body-modified Mayans depicted in Apocalypto, we wanted to get down to brass tacks (no, that’s not a body mod) and meet a few celebrities. Of the body modification world, that is.

The Enigma

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For years a part of Jim Rose’s traveling circus, he’s a professional freak (his own words) and musician who has covered his body in blue puzzle-shaped tattoos, sports “horn implants” and performs all manner of sideshow stunts, from sword-swallowing to fire breathing.

Katzen the Tiger Lady
A bandmate (and until recently, wife) of the Enigma, she wears full-body tattoos as well as cat whiskers attached via transdermal implants on her face. “Katzen,” she’ll have you know, is German for “cats.”

Stalking Cat

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As catlike as Katzen may be, she doesn’t hold a candle to Stalking Cat, an American Indian whose devotion to body modification and catliness is unchallenged. Reportedly beginning his body modifications after a conversation with an Indian chief who counseled him to “follow the way of the tiger,” Stalking’s body boasts

  • extensive tattooing, including facial tattooing
  • hairline modification
  • facial transdermal implants to allow the wearing of whiskers
  • facial subdermal implants to change the shape of the brow and forehead
  • filing and capping of his teeth to have a more feline appearance
  • wearing green contact lenses with slit irises
  • having his ears surgically pointed
  • silicone injection in the lips, cheeks, chin and other parts of his face
  • and a bifurcated upper lip.

Lucky “Diamond” Rich

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Of course, no list of celebrated body modifiers would be complete without Lucky “Diamond” Rich, who claims the Guinness Book’s dubious honor of being the world’s most tattooed person, with ink covering his entire body, including the inside of his mouth and ears. And despite being a blue man, as far as we know he has never been associated with the Blue Man Group.

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Comments (10)

  1. Why anyone would want to do that to themselves is truly beyond me.

    posted by Janel on 12-20-2006 at 8:50 pm

  2. I am guessing that someone would “do that” to themselves for the same reason someone would shave or not shave, part their hair on the right, paint their faces, dye their hair, wear white after Labor Day or baggy pants with the pockets down around the knees. A fashion statement? The notion that tatoos are low class is in itself low class and no, I do not have even one tatoo, it just ain’t my bag.

    posted by Fred on 12-21-2006 at 7:27 am

  3. I dress up as a cat complete with ears, tail, and contacts sometimes just because I feel like it… But I draw the line at brow modification and whisker implants!

    posted by Korin on 12-21-2006 at 1:20 pm

  4. I didn’t mean it was low class. I’m sorry if I gave that impression. I just mean I can’t ever picture myself altering my body so drasticly.

    posted by Janel on 12-22-2006 at 12:37 am

  5. I admit to being ignorant, but what tigers are native to the American Continent? Why would the chief pick (what I think is) an alien species?

    posted by Neil on 12-26-2006 at 5:50 pm

  6. I’m disappointed that the leopard man of Skye didn’t get a mention. :( He has 99.7% of his body, and then moved onto an island (in Scotland?) and became a hermit. I’ve only ever seen the same two or three pictures of him on the ‘net.

    posted by TGecko on 11-8-2007 at 6:40 am

  7. Just forgot to say above that the leopard man of Skye is named Tom Leppard.

    posted by TGecko on 11-8-2007 at 6:43 am

  8. “Judge not that you be not judged”
    Some where in the bible.

    I have one tattoo, the invisible man. I tell people I have two, one clothed and one naked. When I got it I felt as though I were invisible in crowds. I simply felt no one ever noticed me. I no longer feel this way. I’m considering getting a pirate on the other arm. As every one knows pirates are way cooler than ninjas. I feel this way because ninjas are sneaky while pirates are out front. You never see a ninja until it is too late, but a pirate wants you to see him.

    posted by gus on 11-8-2007 at 1:50 pm

  9. yeh, well somewhere in the bible it also says not to modify your body or have marks (tatoos) made upon it.

    so…….

    posted by jojo on 3-5-2008 at 11:51 pm

  10. All them tattoos are not neseccary but itz his body I guess.

    posted by michelle on 2-7-2009 at 7:04 pm

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