Tattoos and piercings were once the mark of a renegade. No more. As the voracious maw of mainstream culture consumes every bit of counterculture in its path, would-be rebels are searching for bigger, meaner, more painful ways to set themselves apart.

Popular culture specialist Latham Hunter says corporate culture has co-opted counterculture trends and made them, well, trendy.

"You've got Kelly Ripa on Regis and Kelly, who has a tattoo and talks about it really frequently. So that doesn't seem very countercultural any more," Hunter says.

With typical piercings and tattoos becoming passe, what does it take to be trangressive? For a growing number of people, it takes extreme body modifications including large-gauge piercings, stretching, cutting and branding.

Tom Brazda of Stainless Studios in Toronto has been in the body modification business for 11 years. He says these days, extreme mods make up at least 25 per cent of his business. "More and more people are getting serious about body art," Brazda says.

And it's not just the young and hip. Brazda's oldest client was an 85-year-old man who had his tongue pierced and came back for a type of genital piercing called a "Prince Albert," which is done through the eurethra.

Dustin Sharrow's extreme mods include cutting, implants, suspensions and branding his skin with white hot metal. He describes his body art as intentional. "It was a sober decision. I get that question all the time, 'Were you sober when you did that?' And, of course. "

Through strike branding, 19 rings were seared into Dustin's forearms. The designs were created with nearly 300 strikes from a blistering metal rod that he describes as being like a flat head screw driver.

Dustin describes the pain of healing his brands as agony. He even suffered mild shock a couple days after the procedure. So with the pain and the permanence, it this self abuse? Not according to bod mod enthusiast Sarai Good.

"I love my body, I think it's beautiful. And why would I want to destroy that? I'm adding things to it. I'm not hurting myself or punishing myself or anything. If anything it's more of a reward."

Sarai says her modifications have been a path to self-love. As a young girl she felt self conscious about her breasts. Since having her nipples pierced though Sarai says she feels better about that part of her body. And the act of self-nurturing and caring for her mods as they heal is appealing. She describes it as a relationship with her body.

Along with multiple face and body piercings, Sarai's ear lobes are stretched beyond the point where they can grow in. She has a surprisingly large hole in her navel that required cutting with a scalpel to accommodate a large black plug. Like Dustin, Sarai has tried body suspension, and has branding on her collar bone.

Sarai describes her appearance as a reconciling of the way she feels with the way she looks.

"For me, that I look so different now than 90 per cent of the people that I walk by every day. I like that I'm set aside from them. I don't want them to think that I'm like the people that will only shop at the Gap. "

But Latham Hunter finds that to be an empty claim. "You're still determining your worth based on how you look," she says.

And as for being different, Hunter says there are striking similarities between extreme mods and cosmetic surgery. The only difference is, cosmetic surgery has society's stamp of approval. It's done in a doctor's office, it costs a lot of money, and appeals to society's stereotypes of ideal beauty. But Hunter insists there's no real difference between breast implants and branding.

"It's a fallacy to think that this makes you an individual. It simply puts you into another group. "

According to Hunter, this similarity is unsettling for many people. She describes it as a great leveler, but recognizes that people don't want to be leveled.

"They don"t like to be told, "You"re just like everyone else" because we have that desire to be an individual. "

Experts describe the desire to be both unique and accepted as dance between mainstream and countercultures. The dance, they say, is getting faster as people push for more radical ways to stand out from the crowd.