Most cultures attach a special significance to reaching puberty, whether it's celebrated with a bar mitzvah, a first Holy Communion or your dad buying you your first six-pack. Then again, there are some cultures out there that still don't consider it a real rite of passage unless it involves something so gruesome that most of us wouldn't do it as adults. For instance ...

5 Mentawai Girls File Their Teeth into Points

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Look, we know that different cultures have different standards of beauty, and one culture's George Clooney is another culture's Mike Biernhaus (he's a really ugly guy who lives near the office, you don't know him). So it gives many of us hope to think that somewhere there might be some remote Amazon tribe that considers the beer gut and neck-beard combo irresistible. Don't tell us it's impossible; after all, the Mentawai tribe of Indonesia think that having pointed, daggerlike teeth is the epitome of sexy.

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"My rotting, razor-sharp dental work brings all the boys to the yard ..."

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The Mentawai are so convinced that pointed teeth are more attractive than flat that the men would probably be more interested in your canines than your cleavage. And for the women of the tribe, it means that once they reach adulthood, it's time to have their teeth chipped away and filed down to points, because how else will they catch the eye of a potential husband?

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"It's cool, guys dig this."

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As you might expect, having someone hack at your pearly whites with a hammer and chisel wasn't exactly a pleasant experience, and the process left the teeth damaged and prone to infection. Sexy infection.

The process is less common these days, since the march of Western culture has pushed out a lot of obscure tribal traditions in favor of cigarettes and HBO, but high-ranking females like the wives of tribal chiefs still prefer to have the procedure done, because nothing says "status symbol" like the ability to cleanly bite the head off a small mammal.