Spectacle

While searching the internet for bearded ladies, I came across a site featuring human marvels, which sent me off in an exploration of other peculiar people once billed as circus freaks.

We now recognize many of these sideshow attractions to be people afflicted with medical disorders like proteus syndrome (elephant man), microcephaly (pinhead), hypertrichosis (lion man), phocomelia (the human caterpillar), Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (rubber man), and acromegaly (giant). Scattered among these genetic anomalies were commonly a few people who brought spectacle upon themselves through piercings and tattoos.

As much as I marvel at the photographs of the circus performers displaying diseases I have heard of but never seen, not one shocked me as deeply as the photograph of this tattooed man. I have seen many tattoos and am a big fan of Miami Ink and its spin-off LA Ink (I am positively obsessed with Kat Von D), but this dude has literally the hardest-core tattoo that I have ever seen. Here is what someone wrote about this guy on the web site:

I have quite a bit of ink in my skin, pushing 300 hours at this point, but the fellow above is truly a hardcore body modification enthusiast. Facial tattoos in North America radically transform public perception and interaction. A facial tattoo that also happens to be a skull, a symbol of death, likely increases that backlash one thousand fold. Still, it is a gorgeously detailed piece of work and I hope this brave fellow still loves the tattoo long after he stops playing bass in that metal band of his.

Seriously. Can you imagine?