For thousands of years, people have stuck holes in their bodies and put some kind of object in them.

And, while they’ve been at it, they’ve found a way to use their bodies as canvases or writing pads.

The term, I understand, is body modification. Or body art.

The year I was born, 1954, was not a high water mark for tattoos and piercings. My parents didn’t have any – my mother never pierced her ears. 

My father’s father had a tattoo – I know I must have asked him about it when I was little – but I seem to remember he changed the subject. He had been in the Italian navy and apparently that’s what sailors did.

But, starting in the ’70s, body art came back into vogue. There were less than 100 tattoo artists in the United States when the decade began; when it ended, there were thousands. Tattoos went from being a sign of being less than savory to a form of expression.

If you have any doubt, go back to Sunday’s Super Bowl pregame and get a look at singer Post Malone, whose solid rendition of “America the Beautiful” came with all kinds of tattooed writing on his face.

There are folks with no real estate left to draw on, thanks to “arm sleeves” and other totally tatted body parts.

As for piercings, other than women’s ears, they were generally unheard of in this country (there are certainly cultures throughout the world in which they’ve always been common) until the early 1980s. The punk movement spurred people began to pierce more than just their ears. Tongues, eyebrows, lips, navels, genitals. 

If you can think of a part of a body, it appears it can be pierced.

Yes, the idea of that would have shocked my parents when I was born. If you had told them that, I would have gotten the first lecture about not doing it right then.