LIP
LABRET PIERCING HISTORY
The piercing of the lips for the
insertion of objects into them is very widely practiced throughout the
world, however only two tribes pierce the lips with a ring; the Dogon
tribe Of Mali, and the Nuba of Ethiopia. Among the Dogon the piercing
of the lip has religious significance, they believe that the world was
created by their ancestor spirit "Noomi" weaving thread
through her teeth, but instead of thread out came speech. All the
other lip piercing that is practiced in the world is done with
labrets, which can either be a pin of wood, ivory, metal, or even in
one case quartz crystals. Among the tribes of Central Africa, and
South America the Labret piercing is stretched to extremely large
proportions, and large wooden or clay plates are inserted.
Among the ancient Aztecs and Mayans
labret piercing was reserved for male members of the higher castes,
they wore beautiful labrets fashioned from pure gold in the shape of
serpents, golden labrets with stones inset and ones of jade or
obsidion (labret in Aztec "Tentetl"). The Native Americans
of the Pacific Northwest, and the Inuit peoples of northern Canada and
Alaska wore labrets fashioned from walrus ivory, abalone shell, bone,
obsidian, and wood.
The Makololo tribe of Malawi wear
lip plates in the upper lip called Pelele. The African explorer Dr.
Livingstone asked a chief the reason for this, in surprise the chief
answered "For beauty! They are the only beautiful things women
have. Men have beards, women have none. What kind of person would she
be without Pelele ? She would not be a woman at all."
"The plug of wood in the lips,
which became little by little a disk, and then a real plaque, was in
some manner a sign of possession of the husband of the Djinja woman.
It is the man who is to marry her, and very often him alone who
operates, transfixing the lips of the young girl with a blade of straw
forms the first sign of the deformation to which she will be subject
as an adult. It is in sum, a betrothal rite."
Dr. Muraz reffering to the
Saras-Djinjas tribe, who insert lip plates up to 24cm in diameter in
both lips. Chari River South of Lake Chad in "Nudity to
Raiment" Hilaire Hiler London 1929
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