Nick Wolak pulled a white-hot iron from a blazing flame and pressed it into Jennifer Bucholz’s chest.
Bucholz is among a growing number of young people from white, middle class families burning designs into their skin, according to Wolak and others who specialize in the form of body art.
As Wolak, who owns Evolved Body Art on North High Street, used the hot metal to etch a spiral design into her skin, Bucholz tried not to focus on the pain. The first year graduate student in Russian studies said she concentrated on keeping still by occupying her thoughts with a song her friend was singing earlier.
“Nick kept asking if I needed to take a break,” she said. “But I knew if I took a break, I wouldn’t want to come back from it, so we went straight through and did the whole thing at once. By the end I started shaking and crying because it hurt like hell.It was more intense than a tattoo, but nothing someone can’t handle. As soon as it was over, I was fine again.”
Branding, a technique in which a mark or symbol is burned into the flesh, has been around for centuries – beginning with cattlemen who marked the flesh of their animals to show ownership. Later the process was adopted to identify criminals, and members of black fraternities have been burning Greek letters into their flesh for years.
A small but growing number of people are now choosing to decorate their skin – not with tattoos or piercings – but with scarring caused by burns.
Tim Curry, associate professor of Sociology at Ohio State, said branding isn’t a new ritual; it’s been done since as early as 1850. Curry said one of the founding fathers of sociology, Emile Durkheim, studied Australian tribes and wrote about their way of denoting their bodies. These people would mark themselves to show which tribe they belonged to, much like modern fraternities.
“Fraternities exist in people’s minds, a social organization people have created,” he said. “Meanings come to have power over individuals.”
When a person feels strong emotion in a group, they can feel the power of the group. Curry said the significance of marking the bodies is to keep the sense of intense emotion and attachment to the group.
“You feel pride and other strong feelings that the brand didn’t create, the group did. But the brand is a way to objectify the emotion,” he said.
The feeling will weaken after the members of the group leave, but the brand will give them something to connect their memories to. It symbolizes who they are and evokes memories in a positive light. If it’s strong enough, it will keep the group going.
“Imagine paying an incredible amount of money to see your favorite rock band,” Curry said. “You go to the concert and have an amazing time. Eventually, your memories of the concert will fade away, so you keep the ticket from the concert. Now every time you see the ticket you think about your experience at the show.”
Although some consider it a form of hazing, Marcus Morris, a 2006 Ohio State graduate and member of Kappa Alpha Psi, decided to participate in the deepest level of commitment by getting a Greek brand.
A cattle prod shaped into a diamond with the letter “K” in the center rested over a flame in an electric stove on a table in a room filled with jittery Kappas. Morris said he walked up to the table, calm and confident. He unbuttoned his white shirt and slipped it down his left arm. He dragged a soapy rag over his shoulder then rinsed it with warm water. After he dried it, he took deep breaths and concentrated on being completely still. A man picked up the glowing prod, and showed it to Morris. With a nod of Morris’ head, the man pressed the prod into his skin for four to five seconds.
“I made sure my arm was loose and relaxed,” he said. “I could tell it was pressed on me, but before I realized it was hot, it was gone.”
A controversial art
Wolak has two brands and also practices the art on others. But don’t expect to walk into Evolved and get a brand; the shop does not offer this service. He was even advised to remove images of brandings he’d done from the Evolved Web site.
Body modification continues to push the envelope, and public tolerance. Almost everyone knows someone with a tattoo. Wolak said he hopes branding will stay an underground trend. To keep it that way, he doesn’t charge money for his artistry, he barters it.
“I don’t want to commercialize branding,” he said. “I want it to remain ritualistic by nature and spiritually motivated.”
Bucholz said a brand might be easy or hard to get depending on whether you’re part of the body modification community. Since Bucholz has established not only a friendship with Wolak, but also a connection, an agreement to barter for a branding was made. In exchange for the inverted spiral stretched across Bucholz’s chest, she is putting together a scrapbook of her branding ceremony for him. When she first mentioned the idea to Wolak, she meant it light-heartedly, but Wolak loved the idea.
“For him, it’s not so much a monetary trade, it’s about a fair trade,” she said.
In the following five days, the healing process began for Bucholz. After the first week, the entire scab hell off and a fresh white line outlined her scar. She said she continued to use ointment to loosen the scar, but was in physical pain all summer. She endured excruciating pain from simple movement of her arms by just putting her hair up.
“I honestly don’t know if I would’ve gotten it done if I’d known how intense the healing process was,” she said.
As for Morris, he nursed his arm meticulously for the several weeks. He made minor adjustments to accommodate his new addition including loose clothing and sleeping on his right side. As the skin reacted to the heat trauma, a cycle of scabs, puss, drying up and crusting over continued. Morris’ only defense was cleaning it, which incorporated using peroxide every morning in the shower.
“It looked disgusting after five days,” he said. “It would scab up, and then fall off.”
Three weeks after the burn, its final form rested on the top of his shoulder without budging.
The risks
Like any cut, scrape, or burn, medical precautions need to be taken when dealing with brands.
Dr. Richard Nelson, an emergency doctor at the OSU Medical Center, said if done correctly, brands shouldn’t be medically dangerous.
“Like any burn you’re losing tissue, which can lead to scarring,” he said.
Cellulitis, among others, is a possible infection people with brands risk. It spreads all over the body and if left untreated may lead to lost limbs.
“The infections are treatable if they don’t let them go too long,” he said. “You could lose a limb, but it’s highly unlikely.”
Healing cuts properly to prevent scarring is tricky, but doing it on purpose is even trickier. Branding is an unpredictable form of body art; what you see is not necessarily what you get. Unlike tattoos, branding is textured. Even though an artist has an idea for a design, it’s not guaranteed how it will turn out. Branding isn’t the work of the artist; it’s the body’s response to the burn trauma.
Dr. Matthew Zirwas, a dermatologist at OSU, explained that burns are broken down into three categories, depending on how deep the burn goes. He said after skin endures heat, it is most likely to induce keloiding in an attempt to repair itself.
“Skin responds by producing collagen,” he said. “In this case, a large amount of collagen is produced by cells called fibroblasts. The fibroblasts collect on the surface producing a keloid.”
Keloids are a reaction to burned skin; they are abnormally raised scars that grow on top of the burn. They feel hard because they form dense and close together on top of the skin. According to dermatologists, although anyone can have keloiding, the more pigment the skin has, the better the keloid; African-Americans and Hispanics are 15 times more likely to have keloiding than Ca
ucasians.
There are several ways people can heal brands, most of them are used for burn victims as well as cancer patients; however, Zirwas said there are no 100 percent successful ways. The goal of each method is to try to kill fibroblasts so the collagen will shrink back down.
“There are typical ways to treat it,” he said. “Our first option is to inject the brand with an anti-inflammatory, which is extremely painful. Next, we could inject it with chemotherapy drugs, the same things that treat cancer. We could also try pulsed dye laser, although the injections seem to work better. If that doesn’t work we could freeze the keloid, actually giving frost bite, which is also very painful. Another option is pressure; someone will wear a tight ACE-like wrap to flatten it down, this usually takes 6 months to a year.”
Zirwas ruled out any surgical techniques to repair a brand simply because it’s not medically achievable.
“We have to cut out the keloid,” he said. “It’s not possible to just cut that out because there would be a big hole that can’t be sewn together. If it’s a small brand or in a straight line, it might work, but it’s not likely.”
Zirwas said another risk people with brands face is infection.
“The thing you’re using to brand is sterile because it’s hot,” he said. “But the infection can come days later. We can give antibiotics to treat the infection, but it won’t treat the keloid.
Under the surface
Looking back, Morris has no regrets. The brander set the prod back on its flaming metal bed as Morris joined his brothers in celebration. All of the brothers were clapping and cheering, admiring each others’ new markings. When he walked into the meeting that February night, Morris had no idea he would be leaving with a brand. Not that it was spontaneous; he just decided to take the opportunity before it passed him up.
“It went from tense to light-hearted,” Morris said. “It was like receiving an award.”
Bucholz’s ritual ended in the same manner with a celebration and a feast with her friends. She brushed off the dead skin from her chest and stood up, infatuated with her new brand. As soon as it ended, she was comforted by friends.
“Oddly enough, after all the complaining I did I’d like to try different methods of branding. I’d like strike branding because it’s more traditional. It’s supposed to be the single most intense form of branding.”
With no regrets, Bucholz feels her decision to get a brand was perfect at this point in her life.
“I like the way it looks; it makes me happy,” she said. “I really planned this out. I wanted to get it after spring ceremony to represent the transition I made from college student to graduate student.”
Bucholz spent about a month and a half discussing branding plans with Wolak. Early in the process he warned her of menacing looks and discrimination she might get if she decided to go through with it. Fortunately, she has not experienced any negative criticism yet.
“More than anything, people are interested in it. People will come up and ask me questions about it, including if they can touch it. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback, which isn’t what I expected. I didn’t think people would necessarily understand it.”
Amanda Dolasinski can be reached at [email protected].
