What is a freak? According to Diane Arbus the word freak has
become a metaphor for estrangement, alienation, marginality, the dark side of
the human experience. I interpreted this as people consider freaks as people
that are not normal. But I wanted to raise the question of what is normal. I’m sure
most of us would think of normal as finding other people like yourself. Could
normal or freak be a subjective word that changes its definition for each
person that uses it? Consider for example the tribes of southern and central
Africa. We have often seen pictures of these tribes where the people within the
photograph have large plates inserted into their lips. Many of us asks
ourselves why would these people do this and would consider them to be freaks.
But that is not the case with the tribe’s people. Dr. David Livingstone the Scottish
explore that explored parts of Africa once came across such people and asked
the tribal chief why the women would do this. The chief’s response was this “For
beauty, they are the only beautiful things women have.” (ezakwantu.com, African
Lip Plugs- Lip Plates). So something we would consider being freakish or abnormal
in completely normal in other cultures and actually seen as a thing of beauty.
Example of African Lip Plug
Quotation and images taken from
-Chris Murray
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