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| Suri woman with lip plate (Source: Pic Fair) |
My curiosity question for this week’s
reading comes from watching the videos of the Suri women stretching their lips
so that they would be married and families would receive cattle / marriage
price. How is lip stretching seen among other tribes like the Suri? Are there
any repercussions if women do not stretch their lips?
In doing my research I’ve learned some
interesting information about another tribe called the Mursi that also partakes
in women lip stretching but the reason and how it is seen is a little different
from the Suri tribe. The Mursi tribe does stretch women lips for marriage but a
big difference is that the Mursi tribe is that they partake in arranged
marriages that also have a prearranged marriage price even before the women
starts to stretch her lip. “When seen in the light the lip-plate worn by Mursi
women is an expression of female social adulthood and reproductive potential.
Another tribe called the Kayapo is also different from the Suri and Mursi tribe
because they men stretch their lips which are extremely rare in most African
cultures. “ The lip-plate worn by a Kayapo man, which marks his fully adult
status, but also to the penis sheath that is ‘bestowed’ on a Kayapo boy at
puberty and which ‘symbolizes’ the collective appropriation of male powers of
sexual reproduction for purposes of social reproduction (Turton 2004).” Aside from lip stretching being a cultural
practice that had lasted many of years throughout history it is clear that
across tribes the lip plate has a similar meaning of fertility and readiness to
marry just with different variations of specific details attached.
To be a woman and not have your lip stretched
plays and important part on how you can be perceived. “The lip-plate is a powerful visual marker of
Mursi identity. For a Mursi woman, not to have a pierced lip is to run the
risk of being mistaken for a Kwegu, a client group of hunters who live
along the banks of the Omo, while to have a pierced but not stretched lip
is to run the risk of being mistaken for a Bodi, northern neighbors of the
Mursi, with whom they are frequently at war (Bodi women insert small plugs
in their lower lips) (Turton 2004)”. This means that aside from stretching your
lip for marriage it is seen as a type of cultural identity marker in these
tribes that can play a big part in survival as well as marriage and acceptance.
Work Cited
Turton, D. (2004). Lip-plates and the people
who take photographs: Uneasy encounters between Mursi and tourists in southern Ethiopia. Anthropology
Today, 20(3), 3-8. doi:10.1111/j. 0268-540x.2004.00266.x
