‘I am proud of my back’: an ethnographic study of the motivations and meanings of body modification as identity work among athletes with spinal cord injury

Little is known about why disabled athletes choose to modify their bodies and the meanings that these modifications have for them. Drawing on data from a larger 4-year ethnographic study, we focus on the motivations and meanings of five athletes who had become disabled due to spinal cord injury (SCI) for tattooing their bodies in specific ways. Our analysis illuminates the following key themes as being significant in the body modification choices of those involved: re-inscribing identity, subverting the ableist stare and embodying disability pride, articulating gendered sexuality, and enabling the process of narrative mapping between pre- and post-spinal cord injury periods. In considering these themes we reveal some important contrasts between ablebodied and disabled forms of engagement with body modification practices.