Many urban elites see facial scarring as connecting people to an unenlightened past. No matter how beautiful, scarification symbolizes something which the new urban elite want to be identified with. Similarly, traditional tribal tattoo designs in Bali and parts of Indonesia have been outlawed and replaced with the flash icons of modern Western societies. Through acculturation, local values are depreciated and replaced by the Western ideology of the natural body. As with every culture, the subcultures in the West use permanent marks to set themselves apart from the mainstream.
European ethnocentrism extends to the origins of body marking.
Unlike primitive socieites, the mainstream Western beauty image involves marketing and mass distribution of desired traits to a wide audience. In contrast, the individual marked with tattoos, piercings and scarification is isolated from mainstream society rather than incorporated into it. It is in this context and with this spirit that I use this term.