Indonesian beauty – sharpened shark teeth (6 photos + 1 video)

By the standards of Indonesian beauty in the village of Mantawayan, the most beautiful women are those with sharpened, sharp teeth. At the same time, such predatory teeth make women so irresistible that husbands lament: now she is so beautiful that she will find a better husband!





Why do you need to sharpen your teeth?

It is believed that such teeth help maintain balance between body and soul. According to local Mantawai beliefs, thousands of years ago the people of their tribe were divided into body and soul.



The shaman, of course, wears patterns and teeth, because he needs to connect with the Spirit as much as possible

And in order to be more like their souls physically, and also to connect with the spirit, they sharpen their teeth here. That is, the “toothed woman” is considered to have a higher soul.

Also, everyone in this village gets tattoo designs on their body to please their souls. It is believed that the more your soul likes you, the longer you will live in this world. You will not need to cross over to another world to reunite. The soul has achieved unity with the body already in this life.



And yet - good!

What it's like to file your teeth

Of course, no pain relief has been invented here. Girls usually have their teeth filed during adolescence. They clamp a piece of wood in their mouth to prevent tongue twitching and endure having their teeth ground with a chisel.



It hurts to watch

Some girls now refuse, fearing pain or having seen enough procedures on their friends. But if you are a woman with status in the village, for example, the wife of a tribal leader, such a procedure is mandatory.

You must be the ideal of beauty and demonstrate to everyone in the tribe your closeness to the spirit world. It’s quite democratic that they don’t grind down everyone’s teeth here, unlike tribes with female circumcision, but give women the opportunity to choose whether to be beautiful or not.



Here are the skulls under the roof of the hut, also beautiful

The teeth are knocked down with a sharpened chisel; nothing more modern is used in the village. In general, in the Mentawai tribe, all 64 thousand people still live in a primitive way. They build Umas huts from bamboo, decorating them with all the skulls they get. The bigger, the better.

They feed by hunting and fishing, and women go bare-breasted. They also hollow out palm trees to get sago, the kind of flour from which they make flatbreads. The most delicious thing is the nutritious, fatty caterpillars that are found under fallen trees.



Someone's going to have a delicious lunch today

At the same time, for convenience, locals wear modern clothes when there is difficult work or wind. That is, they have access to the benefits of civilization. The Mantawai people simply don’t want to take them themselves.

An interesting video from National Geographic shows how the procedure takes place!