The clay or wooden lip plate worn by some Mursi and Suri women is the Omo Valley's most famous — and most misread — image. What it means, how it's made, who wears it, and what tourism has done to it.
No object from the Omo Valley is more reproduced — on magazine covers, in stock photography, on tour brochures — than the lip plate worn by some Mursi women. And almost nothing about it is well understood by the people looking at those images. This page treats the lip plate as what it is: a specific, changing cultural practice with meaning, labour, and debate around it — not a symbol of some imagined "untouched" world.
What it is
The Mursi lip plate (dhebi a tugoin) is a plate of fired clay or carved wood worn in the lower lip, which is pierced and progressively stretched. Plates are made by the women who wear them and can be decorated. A similar practice exists among the neighbouring Suri (Surma).
Who wears it, and when
Lip plates are associated with young women around the time of marriageability and marriage. Crucially, wearing one is — and has increasingly become — a matter of individual choice.
Origins and the myths about origins
A popular story claims lip plates began as a way to make women "unattractive" to slave raiders.
Meaning
Rather than one meaning, the lip plate sits at the intersection of aesthetics, female adulthood, identity, and — today — economics. It can express beauty and self-respect, mark a stage of life, and signal Mursi identity to outsiders and neighbours alike.
What tourism did
The lip plate's fame has changed it. Payment-per-photograph at roadside stops has created incentives to wear plates, and other adornment, specifically for cameras.
What outsiders commonly misunderstand
- That women wear plates constantly. They don't.
- That it's mainly about a slave-raiding past. The evidence doesn't support that.
- That it's disappearing because of "modernity." Its trajectory is bound up with tourism, choice,
and identity in complicated ways.
- That a roadside photo captures its meaning. It captures a transaction.
Visiting respectfully
If you photograph a woman wearing a lip plate, you are entering an economic and personal exchange. Ask, agree fees honestly, accept "no," and don't direct people to pose. Better still, spend enough time — with a guide who holds real relationships — that a photograph becomes part of an encounter rather than the point of one. See photography and consent.
Sources & further reading
Confirm attributions against latest editions before publishing.
- David Turton, writing on Mursi lip plates, tourism, and representation (e.g. 'Lip-plates and “the people who take photographs”', Anthropology Today, 2004). — verify before publish
- Mursi Online (University of Oxford), mursi.org — material on adornment and change. — verify before publish
- LaTosky, S., research on Mursi women and lip-plates. — verify before publish