It didn't start with "cutting," Michelle

Michelle Malkin discovers that self-mutilation has entered American culture as a new modality of self-expression or self-realization or whatever. I'm not sure what she thinks the tattooing and body piercing craze has been all about, but I'm sure that The New York Times occasional Style Section coverage of it as an avant-garde trend in personal style wouldn't deter Michelle from seeing the self-mutilation inherent to it. I suppose we'll all have to wait and see whether the Times pronounces "cutting" a new style or a new public health problem, or both, if it hasn't weighed in already. Michelle writes:

Actresses Angelina Jolie and Christina Ricci did it. So did Courtney Love and the late Princess Diana. On the Internet, there are scores of websites (with titles such as "Blood Red," "Razor Blade Kisses" and "The Cutting World") featuring "famous self-injurers," photos of teenagers' self-inflicted wounds and descriptions of their techniques. The destructive practice has been depicted in films targeting young girls and teens (such as "Thirteen"). There is even a new genre of music -- "emo" -- associated with promoting the cutting culture.

It's clear that the trend of etching skin with needle-embedded dye and jamming metal sticks and rings through tongues, cheeks, eyelids, and noses has taken its next logical step. Perhaps the serial killer played by actor Ted Levine in Silence of the Lambs, who was making outfits for himself out of skin cut from his female victims, will one day be seen as a pioneer of haute couture.