I can't prove it, but I think America is in the middle of serious cultural free-fall. Oddly enough, it all started for the best of reasons. It used to be that women couldn't vote, blacks were slaves, and the only people in power were white middle/upper-class males. This was a bad thing. So people finally decided to do something about it. And here we are today, smack in the middle of "doing something about it." Eventually, we surmise, we will reach that magical point of true liberty, equality, etc. But right now we're still struggling to get there.
Part of the downside of being a culture in transition is that we lose cohesiveness. People feel alienated from each other. There is a move towards, on the one hand, people wanting to be independent from what they often see as a wounded and dying society. On the other hand, they want greater restrictions on the freedom of others, who can't be trusted anymore. Just like in countries ravaged by war, there is also a breakdown of standards. Morality seems to no longer be an issue. You take what you want because you want it, and kill anyone that gets in your way.
At least according to many of the people interviewed in Modern Primitives, one way in which people are struggling for control is by getting pierced, or getting a tattoo. In a way it makes perfect sense: if you affirm your control over your body, then you affirm your control over the world around you. But the curious corollary to that is that piercing and tattoos are often means of buying into a subculture, and thus, giving up self-ownership.
I don't know why people get tattoos, or why they get pierced. I say this even with two holes in my left ear (which barely even provoke a raised eyebrow anymore). The first I got when I was in Israel. That one was more a memory-marker than anything else. Along with the photographs and the Coke cans with Hebrew letters, I got a stud in my ear. The second one, though, was gotten on a total whim with no more than five minutes of thinking. So that's where ear-piercing has come to, in our society. At least among the people in my generation, and that's where you always have to look, because the older people no longer flow so easily with the trends, ear piercing in guys is just a fashion statement. An accessory. Weird. Even in women, pierced ears are weird, although we never think of them as weird, because of all the time we've had to get used to them. In fact, it's a bit weird to find a woman without pierced ears. We often assume she's allergic to gold or has no pain tolerance or was raised by Amish.
But if you think about it, this is a fairly strange practice. We, as a culture, think it's attractive when someone takes a sharp awl, bores a hole in their ear, and then sticks shiny metal objects into the hole. And the flip side of that is that if we can still accept pierced ears, despite this essential strangeness, how can we censor anything else? Aren't ear pierces, tongue pierces, genital pierces, and full-body tattoos, all quite strange?
The fun thing about cultural acceptance of this stuff is that that often makes it lose its meaning. Some people get pierced or tattooed because they enjoy the pain, or because they get a mystical experience from it, or for other reasons. But for many people, it really is just a fashion statement. And that fashion statement is the same one that makes people buy Eddie Bauer clothes for ten times what they're worth, the same that makes being "grunge" cool, the one that says "We're all individuals!" So, as usual, it all comes back to the advertisers.