The larger the plate the woman carries on her lips, the larger the dowry she receives and the more cattle the family will get. So, the bigger the plate, the more benefits they will have. This is how the Mursi, an African tribe located in Ethiopia, conceives that dish women should put on the lip disk.
Although in our Western vision this may seem like a sinister and extremely painful tattoo, we must tell you that For them, putting on a lip disc is one of the most important and respected customs.. At Supercurioso we want to tell you about the custom of the Mursi tribe and why women put plates on their lips. Join us to discover it!
The tradition of women’s plate and the lip disk
Before telling you about the tradition of plate women, it is important to note that piercing the ears, mouth or nose to place accessories or ornaments is an ancient practice that is still present in our societies. These customs are generally associated with aesthetic factorsand have their origin in the rituals of initiation into the sexual or adult life of the tribes of the world.
However, there is something that we must mention. Some customs, such as the lip disc, are being lost due to the advance of political and economic interests. The Mursi are a semi-nomadic tribe trying to hold out between the borders of Ethiopia and southern Sudan, where riots, arms trafficking and illicit business, are causing many of these cultural manifestations to disappear or that they resist only to be that photo that tourists capture on their cameras.
1. Why are they pierced?
The Mursi are a tribe settled in the areas of Ethiopia and Sudan that have some customs such as the Dunga or festive battle and of course the perforations and ornaments on the skin such as lip discs.
Women are the ones who usually apply these gourd or clay discs in the mouthwhile men, for their part, do the same in their earlobes.
We cannot ignore the indisputable beauty of these ornaments, many decorated with drawings, signs, original symbols, which, in turn, combine in an original way with tattoos or other piercings that women wear flirtatiously.
In fact, these dishes are considered artisan expressions of isolated tribes of the world. After all, those lip plates are a beauty feature for these tribes, a beauty associated with pain, yes, without also counting that any woman who refuses to wear her lip plate will be rejected by her people and, obviously, he will not be able to marry.
When they are just girls and still single, these discs are only worn in the ears, but when they reach sexual maturity, they are forced to marryand this is the moment when the plato women of the village begin to cook these clay discs in their wood-fired ovens.
2. How do plate women get pierced?
How do they do it? How do they “install” these discs in the girls’ mouths? we can imagine that it is extremely painful, and yes it is. When the young woman reaches about 15 years of age, it is time to experience these painful rites of passage.
The Mursi perforate the plate women from 6 to 12 months before getting married. For it, the 4 lower teeth are extracted first in order for the plate to hold better in the oral cavity.
After the rudimentary tooth extraction, this will be followed by an incision of about 2 centimeters in the lower lip where a wooden dowel or ceramic disk is applied. You will have to wear it for 3 weeks until the wounds heal. After this time, another larger disc will be applied so that the lips continue to yield. The usual thing is to hold plates up to 22 centimeters in diameter!
The girl must carry these plates in her day to day, they can only be removed when they are with their husbands, or in private with other plate women. A painful deformity and almost incomprehensible to us, but a trait of indisputable beauty and needy integration into her town.
3. How are the dishes?
As we told you before, the plates are usually made of clay or gourd woodHowever, there are distinctions between each. Among the clay dishes we can find four types:
- The Red
- reddish brown
- the blacks
- Natural or white clay.
Some of these plates may become hollowespecially if they have a larger diameter, as this helps them to reduce the weight of the dish itself.
On the other hand, wooden dishes, they are usually made by menthese grant a little more status due to their materiality and unmatched beauty, the surfaces are smoother and the weight is lesssometimes they can be carved or painted.
4. Health problems when putting on the lip disc
Plate women are attractive to the world, we are interested in knowing (even out of curiosity) why they get pierced and how they do it. However, we believe it is important that you also know that This type of practice causes major health problems for women who are forced to use the lip disc.
This type of procedure, almost in its entirety, They are not attended by qualified professionals. It is a tradition that is practiced from woman to woman without sufficient anatomical knowledge and without anesthesia, which easily leads to very serious health problems for dish women.
Some serious health problems can be communicable diseases, such as: HIV, hepatitis, tetanus or tuberculosis. The contagion of transmitted diseases is due to poor hygiene and the bad disinfection of the instruments, such as the plate itself and of course the person who performs the practice.
Likewise, plate women develop herpes labialisincreased flow and salivary incontinence, gingival recession and localized infections, among the most frequent are produced by Staphylococci, Streptococci and Pseudomonas.
What is your opinion about the practice of the Mursi with the plate women? Do not hesitate to leave your comments.
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