I have piercings {3 sets of earlobe piercings, and a scaffold/industrial piercing which is 2 cartilage piercings joined by 1 bar} but no tattoos. I think there's a degree of primitivism involved, but I don't think it exemplifies non-white cultures unless someone has a piercing that emulates a non-white tribal tradition: eg. nose or ear piercings stretched like the Hmong, or those like Amazonian tribes, stretched lip and ear piercings like the Mursi, or has Maori/Samoan-style tattoos. I think nose piercings are a grey area, as they seem to be a Hindu tradition so it depends how white someone believes the Hindus were at the point where they invented nose piercings.    On the other hand, I think lightly-stretched ears aren't deviant, as mummies from ancient Europe had them. Otzi the iceman, for example, had the equivalents of 00ga and 4ga piercings but they weren't giant like Hmong piercings. Likely they were just the product of wearing earrings carved from wood or bone that couldn't be made wire thin and might have stretched from age. Other European tribes pierced their ears to some extent but didn't seem to do anything remarkable with them. I don't remember seeing anything that suggested Europeans ever had facial piercings or performed scarification {seems to be an African practice}. However, tattoos seemed to have been fairly common.    My only thing with tattoos is if I had to become visually anonymous, I could take my piercings out and only someone who knew what they were looking for could tell I ever had them. A tattoo can't be removed at a moment's notice. There are some I'd like to have, but my anonymity is valuable. Likewise, a benefit to being pierced is a lot of pierced people are liberal, so I can be like a wolf among sheep. If there were a sort of WN inquisition, who would be more suspect? The crunchy hippy lady type or the crew-cut guy in a polo?