Years and years of wearing coils around her neck would result in it becoming elongated beyond normal standards. It had taken years of discomfort and dedication, but would her sacrifices be worth it all? The moment of truth, however, was when she decided that she had had enough and wanted to remove them. Many were curious about what the effect on her body would be, why she wanted to wear the coils in the first place, and how she may continue on without them moving forward.
Anthropologists have been hard at work researching why some cultures like to wear the coils in the first place. For one, it relates to a form of protection against slavery, where logic suggests a more “unattractive” person is less likely to fall into this. A bizarre defense mechanism like this may not have any practical uses today, but it is still an integral cultural practice. Other theories directly contrast this, but it has sparked a lot of debate.
Understanding The “Why”
Understanding The Why
The Beauty Theory
In some cultures, both sexes are known to wear the coils, albeit that it is more common for women to do so. For them, it is known as a symbol of beauty, especially as an elongated neck is traditionally associated with worldliness in some traditions. Scientifically, wearing the coils does not elongate your neck, it is just that it seems longer, as your collarbone is pushed downwards to compromise for the added pressure in the region.
The Beauty Theory
Ancient Beliefs
Some studies believe these coils are done in an attempt to boost self-esteem. Slender necks are known to be appealing, and this can be achieved if you wear these rings over time. This kind of cosmetic procedure might not make sense to you, but for many traditional peoples, it is a beauty standard to aspire to. Specific African tribes ascribe this type of modification to all of their female members, which may represent some archaic beliefs, but still hold some truth in terms of ancient culture.
Ancient Beliefs
Warning Signs Aplenty
As can be expected, there are dangers related to practicing this type of tradition. To the unfamiliar eye, it may seem more dangerous than it is, albeit that there are still some considerations to be made before embarking on something like this. The neck is one of the most sensitive parts of the body, and the cervical spine contained within it can easily be damaged. The warning signs come aplenty when you ask for a second opinion from a doctor.
Warning Signs Aplenty
Cultural Significance
What is essentially happening to people within these cultures, is that the metal pushes down on the collar bone, which in turn compresses the ribcage. This is what can be somewhat risky in the long run, but the Kayan women are happy to take the risk due to its cultural significance for their tribe. As you can see from the picture below, the neck stretching process begins at a young age for many little girls.
Cultural Significance
A Bucket List Wish
This custom has extended beyond traditional peoples, however, with some westerners having recognized it as an admirable physical challenge. Sydney Smith was in her late twenties when she started to believe that her dream of becoming a “giraffe woman” may just become a reality. By that stage, she had spent three years wearing more than ten copper rings in a bid to slowly but surely start the process of extending her neck. Things were slowly starting to fall into place.
A Bucket List Wish
Inspiration Behind The Idea
Sydney remembers being intrigued by body modification since childhood, and first came across neck elongation when learning about the tribal collective of Thailand-Burma. Having always had a longer-than-usual neck, to begin with, her obsession soon turned into reality and she felt she now deserved the somewhat unforgiving high school nickname. One that she would soon come to own and proudly call herself. She would end up having the last laugh, as the crude comments would be taken as compliments.
Inspiration Behind The Idea
Testing 1, 2, 3
Having studied the photos of women from long-necked tribes extensively, her first test would involve wrapping coathangers around her neck while she slept. Friends and family thought she had lost her mind, but she was determined to keep going. They also worried that she would end up strangling herself. At the time she believed this would be the way to achieve the same results she had seen in the pictures. Soon, she would be taking a more formal approach.
Testing 1, 2, 3
Growing Steadily Attached
While her neck was biologically longer than everyone else, to begin with, she never felt awkward or strange about it. In fact, it was her pride that led her to experiment with further elongation. In her mind, she was making the most of what she was born with. She spent a lot of time thinking about wearing the rings, growing attached to them, while forgetting any comments from naysayers in the process. This was her destiny.
Growing Steadily Attached
Patience is a Virtue
Sydney opted to undergo this experience while not officially affiliated with the Kayan or any tribe, for that matter. What made it a daunting prospect was that she had already grown into a full adult by the time she started a process, meaning that what usually started at childhood may be a little harder to achieve now. The human body is far sturdier by the time it reaches adulthood. The process would require a lot of patience to follow through.
Patience Is A Virtue
How It Felt
Sydney says she wasn’t phased by the pressure from wearing the rings for the first time. In fact, she called the experience somewhat soothing and exhilarating. It seemed like this otherwise uncomfortable process was completely natural for her. This would, in turn, become a full-blown obsession in 2011 when she moved towards wearing a tight-fitting copper necklace. She had decided that it was time to seriously commit herself. Things would start to change rapidly as a result of this.
How It Felt
Taking Time To Adjust
As her body had done its growing, she knew she would need a lot more time for the process to work than someone who was much younger. It also meant that getting used to the rings would take longer than if it had been done when she was a child. Adding a ring from time to time, she eventually had over 10 rings around her neck. As you can see from the rather bizarre picture below, Sydney was taking her nickname very seriously.
Taking Time To Adjust
A Little More Personal
It may be hard to believe that she wasn't shouting from the rooftops about her shiny new rings. A Maryland native, she spent a lot of time covering them up, largely due to the conservative nature of the community. These were the kind of folks that did not take kindly to individuality, especially not one as unusual as Sydney's. This was particularly hard as she had to waitress jobs and couldn’t always avoid the attention while working there!
A Little More Personal
The Accomplice
It takes two to tango, and Sydney couldn’t attach the rings on her own. A friend helped her to get them soldered onto her neck. Solidified by special screws, they were engineered in a way to still work if there was a medical problem. Regardless of this, Sydney felt they were something that was a part of her, and something permanent. It might be hard to believe how something as constricting as a stack of metal hoops around your neck could be regarded as natural, but Sydney made do happily.
The Accomplice
Weighing Up The Risks
The process of attaching the rings was done safely and in a comfortable environment, although Sydney did suffer a minor burn while it was getting soldered onto her body. She regarded this as a small price to pay for her journey towards perfection. After they were attached, her neck spanned over 10 inches long. This was a good start for Sydney, but the long road ahead would hopefully see her elongating her neck even further.
Weighing Up The Risks
National Attention
To her surprise, Sydney would soon find herself getting national attention in a comic book for Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Known for featuring the wackiest of tales, she was proud to be considered part of the broader cultural movement. While this process would be an everyday feature of some tribes around the world, Sydney was unique in Western culture. She was finally receiving the recognition that she felt that she deserved, and was proud to be recognized as exceptional.
National Attention
Media Buzz
Local media outlets were thrilled to cover this story, and it didn’t take long for it to spread like wildfire. This was because of pure curiosity, but also because it wouldn’t typically be a very Western thing to do. When Westerners feel like a part of their body or face could be improved, they will often pay cosmetic surgeons for nose jobs or tummy tucks. Not Sydney, as she had taken her personal aesthetics into her own hands.
Media Buzz
Expanding The Scope
To her surprise, Sydney would soon find herself being turned into a comic book character. Sans superpower, she still gave many people a feeling of hope and victory. Given how many people there are out there that dream of being different, but are too scared to express themselves, Sydney is something of a heroine. This added to the media attention and garnered her more than just local fame. It was time for Sydney's international debut.
Expanding The Scope
Progress Indeed
Sydney shared a picture online captioned “Progress”, referring to how much her neck was being elongated. Her moderate following was collectively shocked to see how far she had come in such a short amount of time. The coils started doing what they needed to even after just a couple of days, and her physique was adjusting accordingly to accommodate this. If anyone out there held the same ambitions that Sydney did, she was their benchmark.
Progress Indeed
Heavy Is The Head That Wears The Crown
But Sydney's smooth sailing would soon head for stormy shores when the burden of the coils would become too much to bear. Unfortunately, the coils would eventually become too heavy for her body to sustain them. She was starting to put too much strain on her spine, and any doctor that saw what she was doing would hear alarm bells going off in their heads. At this time, she was fifteen coils strong, adding a whopping 10kg to her overall weight. Yikes!
Heavy Is The Head That Wears The Crown
Not Taking Chances
The excess energy burned to carry the extra weight would prove challenging for anyone, especially if you have to do that around the clock. You can imagine that even sleeping would be a challenge, and most areas of Sydney's life were being impacted by the hanging metal. Many may even consider it somewhat of torture, and Sydney started feeling the burden on her health in this regard. Few people can withstand this much pressure and discomfort for so long.
Not Taking Chances
Medical Recommendations
But there were more people than just her friends and family who were beginning to voice their concerns. Doctors were weighing in on her situation, and a local surgeon from California said she was tempting fate with a serious injury related to the nerves in her neck. As her body was no longer growing, his estimation was that she was stretching her skin and that she had peaked in terms of how far she could go.
Medical Recommendations
Getting a Second Opinion
Getting A Second Opinion
We Only Live Once (Literally)
Your health is not to be messed with, and Sydney realized she had no choice but to give in to please from medical specialists. She had had a good time doing the experiment and had already achieved far more than she ever imagined, but risking her health just wasn’t an option at this stage. If she had begun this process during her childhood, then maybe she could have smoothly transitioned into her desired neck length.
We Only Live Once (Literally)
The Rings And Her Life
More recently, Sydney has shared why she decided to eventually remove the (then) painful coils from her neck. She explained that she could no longer function properly, and it was affecting her ability to do ordinary things that other people take for granted. This was a severely debilitating addition that she had made to an otherwise perfectly functioning body, and she began sorely missing the freedom that she once enjoyed. Some goals just are not worth the trouble.
The Rings And Her Life
Life Changes Forever
It can’t have been easy to go about your daily routine with fifteen coils wrapped around your neck. In fact, she may even have started to miss some of the things she could do before she started the experiment, which contributed to her decision to remove the rings. While some people may not understand why anyone would go through this restrictive and painful process to begin with, it seemed like Sydney was starting to share their opinions.
Life Changes Forever
Rings Galore
It wasn't just the physical impact that was starting to wear Sydney out, however. Most people who saw Sydney in person couldn’t help but be awestruck by her beautiful rings. Five years of wearing them had also worn down her willingness to talk about them to everyone. She was tired of having to explain herself constantly and she was even beginning to feel alienated. In some ways, she started to feel removed from traditional society.
Rings Galore
Could The Real Sydney Please Stand Up?
Sydney said she started to feel lost in the entire experiment. This was not only affecting who she was as a person but getting her to start asking a lot of questions about her mental state. She only ever had wanted to extend a feature that she took pride in, with an unusual method that had steadily begun consuming her. She wanted to feel like herself again, no matter what she had to sacrifice in the process.
Could The Real Sydney Please Stand Up
Free as a Bird
It was finally time to go back to normal, Sydney had finally decided. This was not a decision that she had come to lightly, given how literally and figuratively attached she had been to her coils. Half a decade after trying the first ring on, Sydney made the decisive and dramatic choice to remove them for good. The time had come to close this chapter, considering how much it was weighing on her physically and emotionally.
Free As A Bird
The Truth Of The Matter
In her own words, Sydney expressed that it had become impractical and that she no longer wished to isolate herself from society. At some stages, she didn’t even want to leave the house or drive, which is not possible to sustain in the long run. They say that many problems become apparent in hindsight, but Sydney had realized that this was not a feasible option long before it ended. All good things must come to an end.
The Truth Of The Matter
Once a Giraffe Woman, Always a Giraffe Woman
Now without the coils, Sydney is not looking to forget her formal “giraffe woman” days. She has no regrets and talks fondly about the experience, even though it has had a significant physiological effect on her body. At least she no longer stands out from the crowd, even if her neck is longer than most people's. But would Sydney have any lasting issues from her experience? This had been a radical body modification that doctors had been worried about from the start.
Once A Giraffe Woman, Always A Giraffe Woman
Taking a Toll
The rings would eventually cause some damage which was initially unforeseen, including some bruising on her collarbone area which took a very long time to heal. Other than that, there were no serious injuries, and her neck was growing stronger each day. Painful abrasions aside, Sydney was very lucky not to have sustained serious damage to her neck and spine. This was largely thanks to her own care and patience, and she had clearly been extremely good about wearing the rings.
Taking A Toll
Pain and Weakness
But Sydney would have suffered considerably with her rings, something that she only revealed after the process. In the first few weeks, she said she was in a lot of pain, with her neck as weak as “arms on a toothpick”. This may not be fun to hear, but it helps to think about if you ever consider doing something similar, or if you have a similar fascination with neck elongation. Don't try this at home!
Pain And Weakness
The Recovery Process
Bruising and stiffness aside, doctors did tell Sydney that she was recovering faster than they had anticipated she would. Perhaps as a result of luck or a genetic predisposition, but it seemed as if the worst had been avoided in this instance. It also helped that Sydney's neck was longer than usual, and who knows what injuries she could have sustained if a person with a shorter neck had stacked these coils. So, was it all worth it in the end?
The Recovery Process
One of Many
In recent years, many others have gone to drastic measures to change their appearance to fit a different mold. Hollywood, in particular, has seen a great increase in people undergoing operations in order to resemble their favorite stars. It seems like you cannot stop some people from achieving their aesthetic goals, even if it means years of pain and possible severe injury. Giraffe girl's time in the sun is over, but who knows who will replace her.
One Of Many