Brand New Bodies

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The pungent aroma in a Los Angeles salon called Puncture is reminiscent of burnt popcorn. "That is a hell of a smell!" yelps Daren Gardner, 28, whose lanky body lies quivering on a medical-examination table. The odor is actually coming from Gardner's skin, as he submits to the latest trend catching on among tattoo and piercing devotees: branding. Body artist Todd Murray torches a small square of stainless steel using a propane flame, then lines up his shot like a pool shark with a cue, swiftly applying the red-hot metal in what's called a "kiss of fire," one of 10 strikes necessary to finish the job. "This is amazing," gasps Gardner, balling his fists while the scorching marks are applied. "If I could bottle this feeling up, I would give it away."

Welcome to the strange world of body modification, or "bod-mod," in which the human form serves as a personal canvas to be cut, poked, burned, stretched and adorned. It's a world in which terms like journey and enlightenment are used to describe acts of self-mutilation that would make even Quentin Tarantino cringe, a subculture combining tribal spirituality with kinky sex and a dash of circus sideshow. It may seem weird, but it has a long tradition: in November the American Museum of Natural History in New York City will present "Body Art: Marks of Identity," an exhibition surveying 4,000 years of skin decoration.

Branding is, well, a hot trend largely due to Fakir Musafar, 69, a former ad executive who calls himself a shaman and devotes his life to bod-mod, along with other more fantastic practices like O-Kee-Pa, a mystical Native American body-suspension ceremony. Musafar started a California state-licensed branding school in 1992 and has spread his philosophy through a website and a quarterly magazine called Body Play. He claims that branding is now administered by some 50 people in the Western world and could hit the mainstream in the way piercing did a few years ago.

Keith Alexander, who works out of a New York City shop that bills itself as "the world's largest fetish emporium," estimates he's seared more than 150 skin signs over the past five years. "People need memorable symbols when they pass from one stage of life to another," he says. "Some get a brand at the end of a divorce, others on their birthday." Many of his clients are punk rockers and S&M aficionados. About half, he says, are fraternity members, including African-American frats that have used branding for years, sometimes choosing slave designs to connect with their ancestors. While branding marks are not as detailed as tattoos (and can hurt more--though no worse than a bad sunburn, say enthusiasts), for some they have more ritualistic power.

"Whether you're a teenager or a 60-year-old executive, there appears to be a need for body rituals that aren't provided for in our society," says Musafar. Yet Armando Favazza, a University of Missouri psychiatry professor and author of Bodies Under Siege, thinks it's rare when people find deep meanings in branding: "It's a faddish sort of thing, meant to shock or provide a sexual turn-on." In a few cases it may be therapeutic: Favazza says abused children may later undergo alterations "to reclaim control over their bodies" and forge "a mark of distinction to raise self-esteem."