Flesh tunnels gone mad

Ok so when I was a bit younger I went through the whole flesh tunnel stage where you make the holes in your ears bigger by putting 'stretchers' in them and slowly and quite painfully stretching the skin until you get a very obviously hole. Now I'm not very good with intense pain but the whole throbbing ears was driving me mad so I stopped when they were 5mm wide (that was enough pain for me) but the thing is a very good friend of mine has just forwarded this picture to me and I was wondering why on earth anyone would do this to themselves???
Now I cant be the only person in the world who thinks that this is absolutely grotesque, who want to see inside someone elses nose apart from the nose doctor!!!