extreme body mods

http://www.modern-savage.com/body_mods/body_modifications.php

In my blog to day I've decided to look at extreme body modification as this aswell is a topical taboo.
Extreme body modification, while seeming unnecessary, painful and dangerous, appeals to a surpising number of people. Body modifiers desire to change their body so strongly that they perform painful, dangerous and irreversible procedures upon themselves often without the support or knowledge of others. The reasons may be varied and strange, but they are always real and never trivial - few people perform major surgery upon themselves simply upon a whim.

Modern society prides itself on it's tolerance and diversity. Most people have no problem accepting others with differences, as long as those differences resulted from forces beyond their control, such as genetics, accidents or diseases. Insulting racial minorities and the disabled is considered unacceptable and immoral, and rightly so. Yet it is clear that we have much more difficulty coming to terms with others who wish to make themselves different of their own accord. Is this a double standard?