Culture is Sometimes an Ouch

HAZARD: Explicit, exotic pictures are exposed. Not advisable to be read while eating, lest one will have to experience an unsettling feeling in the stomach that will later accompany the urge to vomit.

While I was looking for a good show that might kill the boredom I was dealing with during my last vacation, I was stunned and moved in surprise of seeing this lady who is seemingly a part of a tribe somewhere in Africa. She was with stuff in her lower lips, something which caused perplexities in my mind. Later after a light load of research in the net, I found out that this stuff is a lip plate – a traditional practice among the tribes in Africa, which usually catches the fervent attention of the tourists.

Much to my delight and fascination, I’ve read an article regarding this perplexing culture of these tribes.



The Mursi, Chai and Tirma are probably the last groups in Africa amongst whom it is still the norm for women to wear large pottery or wooden discs or ‘plates’ in their lower lips. The lip-plate (dhebi a tugoin) has become the chief visible distinguishing characteristic of the Mursi and made them a prime attraction for tourists. A girl’s lower lip is cut, by her mother or by another woman of her settlement, when she reaches the age of 15 or 16. The cut is held open by a wooden plug until the wound heals. It appears to be up to the individual girl to decide how far to stretch the lip, by inserting progressively larger plugs over a period of several months. Some, but by no means all, girls persevere until their lips can take plates of 12 centimetres or more in diameter.


It is often claimed that the size of the lip plate is correlated with the size of a woman’s bridewealth. This is not born out by the fact that the marriages of many girls have already been arranged, and the amount of bridewealth to be paid by their husbands’ families has already been decided, before their lips are cut. Another common idea is that the practice of cutting and stretching the lower lip originated as a deliberate disfigurement, designed to make women and girls less attractive to slave traders. This ignores the fact that the Mursi themselves do not give such an historical explanation and that the practice is confined neither to Africa nor to women. Amongst the Kayapo of Brazil, for example, senior men wear a saucer-like disc, some six centimetres across, in the lower lip (Turner, 1980). Like other forms of body decoration and alteration found the world over (like ear piercing, tattooing, and circumcision), the lip plate worn by Mursi women is best seen as an expression of social adulthood and reproductive potential. It is a kind of ‘bridge’ between the individual and society - between the biological ‘self’ and the social ‘self’.

Isn’t that painful? Darn it, I guess that’s too much to be considered as part of culture and tradition. Aren’t these people aware of civil disobedience? In my speculation, this odd activity is more nerve-racking than circumcision. Imagine, these people tear their lips and they do not even put a thing which will alleviate the intensity of the pain. Ouch!
Well, I guess that is what the term culture is all about – preserving the norms and practices of one’s heritage, at any extent, even to the matter of life and death.

PAGADUAN, Jesson A.