Fishmaul / Fishmouth / ZygZag Cheek Stretching

This was originally posted on BodyTwo, but I was asked about it again this morning, and I thought it related well to the lip disc posts.

One of the most asked-about members of the modification community is “Fishmaul” (“Fishmouth”) or “Zygzag”, who is said to wear massive plugs in stretched cheek piercings. Here’s the photo set that most people have seen reposted over and over:

fishmaul-zygzag-cheek-stretching-1.jpg

Some people claimed he was part of the German street punk scene in Aachen, others claimed he was Russian, and others claimed it was simply a fake Photoshopped picture. As it turns out he’s Polish, and quite real. A reader wrote me about him,

Hi Shannon. That “Fishmouth” is from Poland and everyone calls him “ZygZag”. For now he lives in Germany in a punk squat or something. I don’t know him but he’s a Polish BodyMod legend. For now he doesn’t wear his plugs. I’ve got different photos of him without plugs.

Here are the photos that came with that email:

fishmaul-zygzag-cheek-stretching-2.jpg

He was drinking a beer at the time, so clearly he’d figured out how to live with giant holes in his cheeks…

Not long afterwards I received this photo of ZygZag with his plugs in at an event, wearing his cheek plates and other piercings:

fishmaul-zygzag-cheek-stretching-3.jpg

As I wrote at the time, I can’t begin to express the admiration that I have for ZygZag’s dedication to developing this look… He’s got to be the only person on the planet, maybe the first in history, to push cheek stretching like this, and the degree he’s done it to is staggering. It’s really amazing to me, and the first time in a long time that I’ve seen something that’s genuinely new.

Unfortunately not much information on ZygZag is out there, as another Polish reader explains,

In January I discussed with my friends the subject of cheek stretching. Someone said that Zygzag is the only person in Poland with stretched cheek piercings so we started to look for his pics. After a few months of searching some guy contacted us and said that he knew Zygzag, and we wouldn’t find anything because he never wanted to have his pictures published. We also came to know that he removed the plugs because his eyes were constantly irritated and he couldn’t speak properly cause of the facial deformation. He had his skin transplanted few times to make the holes smaller. I don’t know how much of this is true, but it’s some additional info about the guy anyway.

So there you go… It won’t surprise me if he ends up being the only person to do this, ever. If anyone knows more (or knows anyone else that’s done this), please do write me!

Bodmod Punky and His Magic Cheeks

Well…maybe not magical, but most certainly attention grabbing! The last time I remember seeing stretched cheeks close to this size was in the post about our old friend fishmaul back in 2008. You might remember Bodmodpunky from the previous post I did about his deep chest piercings here.

The photo below sparked a little controversy among the piercing community as there were a few viral posts claiming his cheeks were cut from nothing to this size. Honestly nobody had much background on this photo so I decided to go straight to the source!

punky1

Bodmodpunky was willing to answer a few quick questions for ModBlog, he is not a native English speaker so a bit of translating was in order.

 Firstly was your cheek initially cut to 30mm?

My cheeks were at 1,6mm for four years before I made the initial cut to 10mm, After 3 Months they healed completely and I made the next cut to 18mm. This healed in 1 Month. I stretched then to 22mm in 1mm increments and yesterday we made the last cut to 30mm. The jewelry was PTFE with 22mm wearable after cutting and Black PMMA with 14mm wearable when completely healed. We didn’t use any stitches only the teflon jewelry.  When you make a smaller initial cut it takes a long time to heal completely. We made a big cut for lower pressure. Cheeks are always trouble when they have too much pressure on them.  The big risk is if you damage your salivary glands, the nerves are no problem.

Who performed the procedures?

Danny from Rock the Body Studio in Baden (CH)

What kind of adversity have you experienced having such an unconventional and visible modification? Are you happy with it today?

People look at me strangely when I’m walking through the city. My life will never the same as before, but i like it and would never want to go back. I’m really happy with all my mods and I’m not finished with my modification. 

punky2

Take a bite of my bad girl meat

Joeltron (FirstBlood.com.au, joeltron.com) shows us his teeth — yeah, he’s no Zygzag, but this is how Joeltron looks when he takes out his 13mm (1/2″) cheek piercing. If I was him I would totally wear clear glass plugs all the time or maybe tunnels with corks conspicuously stuck in them, especially if the size continues to increase. And gosh, I really love his eye tattoo — that lime green is one of my all time favorites.

joeltron-teeth

Hey boom-boom! Zygzag lives!

Got a great tip from a friend who was watching a overflowing-with-fun video (that even reminds me of some of the big BMEfests of yore in a way) of Woodstock 2012 by Ostro and Cam-L, held at the start of August in Kostrzyn nad Odrą, Poland, and at 0:24 who should make a brief appearance but one of my piercing heroes, Zygzag, aka Fishmaul, the fellow who in the past wore the remarkable stretched cheek piercings — if you don’t know who I’m talking about, you must go read my original entry on it here — news.bme.com/2008/02/24/fishmaul-fishmouth-zygzag-cheek-stretching/ — as it’s one of the most remarkable (and most divisive love-it-or-hate-it) things I’ve ever posted. It looks like he’s looking about the same as the last time I saw him — his good ol’ grimey self — and isn’t currently wearing jewelry in those big holes (and nylon thread in many of the little ones). Here are some relevant screencaps.

zygzag

Click to double the size of that image. Wish I could get you better photos and an interview, but it’s not like he’s a guy that’s easy to get in touch with from Canada over the Internet. If someone reading this is a friend and can help out, you’d make me very happy and I’d be thrilled to publish any photos or information you can provide.

Finally, If you’d like to enjoy the whole music video, here you go.