Esperance, 17, a high school student
Coming from a military family, Esperance spent much of his youth moving around the American South, including three years in Japan.
She then followed in her family's footsteps and joined the military as a medical officer.
“I'm a military veteran now,” she explains, “and my creative drive mainly came after I got out of the military, but I didn't have the creative drive while I was in the military, so maybe that's what led me to that path!”
She also uses meditation to manage the pain caused by intense tattooing procedures.
“This is a moment in time that I'll never forget,” she said.
Esperance was just 21 when she first entered the world of body modification, a small symbol of her connection to her first partner's family.
The first tattoo, on his left hip, was quickly covered by a third, a bright and majestic phoenix, but it ignited a love that has followed Esperance ever since.
She immediately realized she loved tattoos and wanted to get more.
“When I find an artist whose style I'm comfortable with and find inspiring, I usually give them a lot of creative freedom,” she explains.
“Sometimes I do my own tattoos, but now I mostly get them embedded.”
Nearly 10 years on from his first tattoo, Esperance's long-term project aims to create a cohesive piece of art where larger artwork and body mods blend harmoniously together.
She looks at the whole picture rather than focusing on just the individual parts.
“It's still hard to imagine a set end in terms of full body coverage,” she explains. “For years, I've been moving in the direction of more uniformity in my suits, and that's still my goal.
“I feel like there are still some parts that don't flow well, so my first goal is to get them to blend in with the whole and then build from there.”
“For me, bigger, more cohesive pieces are better,” she explains.
As such, she doesn't even have an overall favorite tattoo: “My goal for many years has been to pursue cohesion, and in the end I like the flow that comes with it.”
Additionally, the Army veteran has undergone 89 body modifications, vastly surpassing the previous record for most body modifications by a woman, which stood for more than a decade.
Esperance took the title with 40 more body modifications than the previous record holder, Maria Jose Cristerna of Mexico, who broke the record in 2012 with 49 body modifications and extensive tattoos.
Before undergoing his first physical transformation, Esperance had already experimented with body suspension several times.
Esperance's first body transformation was getting a split tan in 2014.
Ten years and two world records after that first split tan, Esperance's incredible body modifications range from “classic” body piercings to more creative modifications such as tissue stretching and eyeball and gum tattoos.
At the time of writing, she sports facial modifications including 15 subdermal implants, nasal septum and lip piercings, and has had both nipples removed.
She has had her torn tongue and gums inked, and her collection includes five facial implants.
The most sensitive parts of her body have also been modified, including 18 genital piercings and the staining of her inner labia with ink injections.
“I think it's clear that I don't try to conform to traditional beauty standards, which can be liberating but also something that a lot of people might not understand and might see as negative,” Esperance confesses.
