File:Hutsebaut 003.jpg

English: I geotagged this photo in Bunia, but I don't know whether this portrait was actually taken there. I have no information about Hutsebaut, except that he (she?) was a photographer who operated in and from Bunia.
For what I have seen in various photo-sharing groups, it seems that today, wearing lip plates is a fashion statement. However, there may be a dark side to this practice, at least in central Africa, and at least during this woman's lifetime. Although it may be politically incorrect to talk about this today, I want to say that, according to my grandfather, wearing lip plates had nothing to do with fashion and was not meant to be sexually attractive, on the contrary. At a time when Arab raids to round up slaves were frequent in this region, the idea was to make women unattractive so that they would be left in peace (so to speak) and would not end up in a harem or other. I don't know whether this is true or not. However, given the time when these photos were taken (probably early 1950s), the age of the woman pictured (it is safe to say that she was born between 1850 and 1900), and the fact that lip piercing stopped during and after the colonial era (again, at least in central Africa), I think that my grandfather's story is plausible.