Did you go to a piercing/tattoo place or a mall store or what? Supposedly some pediatricians will do it, but that may just be for babies.
My oldest and youngest have theirs pierced, but I had nothing to do with that. Nia (8) is responsible for taking care of her earrings herself and I'm not buying her any more until she does. Selah (2) pulled one from her latest pair out yesterday because the back had come off, and I'm going to try to find a piercing place that will put in tiny hoops that she can't open because I freak out about both safety and ripping. Her former foster family gave her big (I think, anyway) real diamond studs, and they're put away for prom or something, when she's much, much older.
Claire's Boutique all the way 4-evah BFF!
I'm not sure when it will become permissible for our kids to do this. I'm also worried about the safety and ripping.
When I got my piercing there was a kid about 12 years old getting his nose pierced (the middle bit, whatever it is called - the piercing that makes everyone who has it look like a prize ox). His mom was with him. He already had big plugs in his ears, and eyebrow piercings. His mom was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing.
It never crossed my mind to think about safety or ripping, which probably says more about Hawaii as an individual than anything else. She will take better care of her ears and earrings than I do.
When I was fifteen, I pierced my own ear (the upper cartilage part) with a safety pin, because I was edgy. Then my mom made me take it out, because she is not edgy.
Ha. That's the same word I use when people ask (not often, but on occasion) why I have my lip pierced. "Because I'm edgy!" because I'm so clearly not.
Pierced ears, sure, whatever, but do you worry that someday she'll regret the tattoo?
I do not approve of those ox-like nose piercings. They do not look nice to me.
And no one will notice or care about this, but so I feel I'm not being unfair to anyone, when I said big (I think, anyway) real diamond studs I do know that they're real and also that they're the biggest diamonds in the house, which is not saying all that much. It still seemed a bit much for a baby in my aesthetic at least. Lee got her some very nice tiny pearls (against my advice) for her adoption and she managed to pull them out and lose them within the week.
Why don't you just take Selah's earrings out and let them close up? She can get them re-pierced when she's interested in having earrings.
heebz, do your kids want lip piercings because you have one? Mine definitely want a pierced nose like mine and now Lee's again, which is only making the demand worse.
12: I worry about scarring. And culturally it's normal for kids in or community who look like her to have earrings, even some of the boys. She does love hers in addition to taking them out and talks about earrings a fair amount, but she seems fine and age-appropriate about it.
I have strong cultural? Maybe it's just my family? beliefs that ear piercing happens before six months or after twelve, but inbetween those ages seems odd to me. It's the healing thing -- an infant, it's just another aspect of caring for them, and the kid can't really interact with them enough to do themselves any damage. And over twelve or so, they can care for a minor wound themselves. But inbetween those ages caring for it and preventing the kid from doing damage makes it a bad idea.
I'm reporting my ingrained reaction -- when I think about it, caring for a fresh piercing on a little kid isn't that big a deal, so it's not particularly rationally based. (And baby ear-piercing would itself be weird in my family, we'd just recognize it as a reasonable thing to do if that was the sort of thing you were likely to do.)
14: Don't worry about scarring. Kids' ears close up and get re-pierced all the time. Mine certainly did, maybe 3 times.
The other reasons, seems reasonable.
Huh, my range is probably 6 months to 4 years where I wouldn't want to bother with a kid with new earrings. But Hawaii is a weirdly sedate, responsible kid. But I think Hokey Pokey would also be mature enough at 6 that I wouldn't think about that aspect.
My one real control-freak mother thing is no body modification other than a single lobe piercing before eighteen. No tattoos, no other piercings. Mostly, it's that it's an area where I neither want to give blanket permission for whatever they want, or put in the thought to figure out sensible limits, so I figure that no piercings at all is harmless, and anything they really want to do can wait.
And in fact, there are probably more kids that got their ears pierced in the 5-8 range in our group of friends than any other age, if I stop and think about it.
a single lobe piercing before eighteen
And not Parietal.
I feel that way about letting them get a puppy.
At 7, Noser would be a dangerous hazard to himself (wrestling with friends, etc.)
At 5, Rilee would be a dangerous hazard to herself (constantly touching them and getting infected--as she's done to two toenails and one fingernail by chewing on them).
18: Well, right -- it's not that there's nothing to my concerns, but the fact that I have strong feelings about twelve being the right age isn't rational.
19: So when they asked for Wolverine style retractable claws you put your foot down and said no?
when they asked for Wolverine style retractable claws you put your foot down and said no?
Dude, that's not decoration, that's a calling
I think I got my ears pierced in 1st grade. I didn't request it or anything. I was taken to the mall and popped in a chair and had my ears pierced.
So you know the disk things people put in their ear lobes in ever increasing sizes? That seemed like they had crested in popularity but are now alas coming back? Does anyone else have the unwanted but unavoidable image when seeing them on men that it must make their earlobes waggle hilariously when, hmmm, thrusting? It's just not a sexy look.
I was at the bar watching a buy try to find his. It shot out of his ear as if propelled by a rubber band.
do you worry that someday she'll regret the tattoo?
Who would regret having "damaged" tattooed just below the hairline?
I believe that through the 1950s or 60s it was vaguely disreputable for women to get their ears pierced at all. You don't want to look like a gypsy.
the disk things people put in their ear lobes in ever increasing sizes?
Plugs? I briefly dated a girl with plugs, and I remember thinking they smelled weird. It might have been all in my head; I think I was kind of squicked out by them. Because I'm not that edgy.
Which is why clipon earrings existed. Has anyone ever tried to wear those? All the ones I've ever tried hurt like you would not believe.
My mother, sister and wife do not have pierced ears, or anything else pierced. My daughter has pierced ears.
35: Yes. Clip-ons are strange and painful. Although I've always liked the bit in movies where Joan Crawford or someone would tug off her enormous earring before picking up the phone.
37: Yes, that was why Crawford drank so much.
Plugs, yes. Sometimes they have sort of tire rims, tho. If distended enough would still waggle distractingly during thrusting I suspect. Smelling not good is hideously imaginable, that skin is distressed.
Clip ons soooo painful! But my earring piercings closed up years ago and can't be bothered. Started not bothering with jewelry years and years ago because couldn't afford anything I'd like and now sort of uninterested. But it isn't on principle or anything. Then recently discovered better half thought it was a principled stance all these years, ummm sorry nope.
I've mostly given up on jewelry, but once or twice a year I'll wear earrings. (Federal court appearances, for some reason, I feel like they make me look more... appropriate?) And then I'll keep wearing them for a week or so, until I get bored and put them away for eight months.
I really like personally meaningful jewelry, which is the only kind I wear, but I'm feeling sort of stuck and wanting something more or different. That's probably just an obvious and stupid metaphor about the rest of my life, but I guess I could browse for simple bangles on etsy or something. But then if I do start CrossFit I should probably only wear things I plan to take off a lot, etc.
I got my ears pierced with a sewing needle in the school dormitory when I was 15. It was quite a craze at the time, and one girl in particular was in high demand for her piercing skills. She'd freeze the earlobe with an ice cube, mark the spot with an eyeliner pencil, sterilize the needle in a cigarette lighter flame, and wham, push it straight through. My mother was furious, especially when she learned how it had been done.
42: that's how I did it, only when I was 13, and I was at home
I love wearing jewelry. I like to spend a moment in the morning and MAKE an outfit.
I know a goldsmith who makes super high end jewelry and one of the features you get in bespoke jewelry at this level is a differential between left and right earrings so that they both sit/hang correctly, as most piercers fail to take account of need to change angle of piercing.
You're supposed to put an apple behind the ear to push against.
Clip ons are fine for a few hours, and it truly is fun to pretend you're Joan Crawford when taking them off.
There's also the cultural component. My ears were pierced at 3 months. My kiddo asked for, and I agreed, to let her pierce her ears at 7 years. I did feel a need to explain the cultural practice to others in our "class" bracket (though clearly, one's ethnicity influences the perception of class).
PS: I remember a discussion in a midwestern professional school in which the professors decided they wanted to ban piercings in the department. I remember bemusement at whether my mother could still volunteer/work in his lab.
My grandma had her ears pierced as a baby. My mom at 40-something. I think she made my sisters wait until 8th grade.
PPS: My 7 yo, who is a hapa, and fairly racially ambiguous, was once correctly identified (ethnically) by a small child who said, "I thought so, because of your long hair and earrings".
49: Wait. How? Why? All piercings?
The police department told the university to shut down at 2pm and send everyone home, presumably in anticipation of a riot. Whee!
I'm not sure whether it's a crazy overreaction or not.
(I just made the appt to put kitty down this afternoon. :( )
52: All piercings? How could they even tell? Or were the department's students running piercing parlors in their offices?
56: Sorry to hear that. My sympathies.
Also, the emoticon plus close parens really looks like a whole different emoticon.
Poor kitty and heebie-ba-jeebies! Mucho sympathy.
I got my (right) ear pierced when I was 20. It was sort of a big deal. My mother did not manage to conceal her disgust. So then I got it pierced two more times and grew a beard and grew my hair out almost to my shoulders. My grandmother asked my grandfather, who had had a stroke some years before and lost some of his I think maybe not all that present to begin with tact, what he thought of my appearance and he said "repulsive" and left it at that.
Oh, sorry, heebie! And don't let the kids talk you into a replacement dog.
I was tempted to tease the better half the other day by sending him a pic of Chekhov snuggled up with one of his dachshunds, but thought better of it. I then lost whatever relationship benefit I might have retained through exercising restraint by telling him about the whole thing.
I got my ears pierced when I was six, after much begging and pleading. But then I was lazy about the antiseptic stuff so they got infected and I had to let them close up. And that happened again at least once, but I don't remember how old I was. 8 or 9? I think I was 12ish when I got them pierced again and it finally stuck.
That's a sad afternoon, but I bet you're making the right decision for kitty. I hate doing tough but necessary things for pets.
At various times in college I wanted to get either a nostril pierced (everyone was like "yeah that just doesn't go with your personality") or a nipple.
Those plugs sometimes make me want to sing "Do Your Ears Hang Low?"
***
Cat sadness. Cat condolences.
Sorry about the kitty, heebie.
My parents made me wait until I was 10 to have my ears pierced, with the same rule as LB, one hole per earlobe, until I was 18. I got a second piercing in my left ear my first year of college. Not very rebellious. My mother got her ears pierced (for the first time) a few weeks after I did. Now that she's ill, she wears LOTS of jewelry (think: dangly earrings, multiple necklaces, a brooch or two). She changes her earrings many times a day, but she doesn't have enough focus/memory left to change both at the same time, so she usually ends up with a single (large, dangly) one by lunchtime.
Don't worry about scarring. Kids' ears close up and get re-pierced all the time. Mine certainly did, maybe 3 times.
I don't know if this is a consideration for Thorn, but I'm pretty sure white people generally have less tendency toward keloid scarring than other races.
70 is part of it. None of my girls have gotten any keloid scars, but it runs in at least two of the families, including two little kids I can think of with keloids from pierced ears. I had a white ex who got them and I think they're fascinating, but not something I'm aiming for as a parent or anything.
54: About 2 weeks ago, a young black man (Freddie Gray, for those keeping track) died in police custody under shady circumstances that have yet to explained. His funeral was this afternoon with a turn out in the thousands.
There were some minor confrontations at a demonstration this weekend, and I guess the police are expecting there will be more.
They're obviously serious about it. This wasn't "We suggest all non-essential staff go home early", it was "Clear the building by 2pm, no exceptions". I also passed knots of 10-15 officers standing around at various points on the way home.
A close relative of mine developed a keloid scar following neck surgery as an adolescent. We are both nearly as pale as they come. When that relative was in a car wreck a few years later ending up with a long line if carefully crafted stitches across the face the dr mandated a multi-year regimen of a pressure device, sunscreen and hats. Worked amazingly well and started me down the road of fanatical sun protection. UV UB rays may not be killers but damn they are wrinklers, dryers and discolorers!
Okay, I had those enormous gauged things - or "plugs", as the kids called them. (I let them close up a bit due to concerns about cultural appropriation which I do not now think were especially relevant - I mean, no one else seems to care, and the biggest tumblr voice of This Is Evil White Cultural Appropriation Ruining Things turned out to be a rapist and disappeared from these our internets, which does not necessarily invalidate their point but still makes me care less....and am thinking about re-stretching them.)
I had them for most of ten years - I remember I had them all stretched out by the 2004 election and wore them most of the time through early 2014. Mine were about 1/2" in diameter. If you have wooden ones and, like, wash your ears, they don't smell. I mostly liked them because they're easy to leave in your ears and the wooden ones are very comfortable - I hate fussing with things like earring backs but I like earrings, and all you needed to do with the plugs was take them out when you showered.
Most of my pairs were kind of like these, and I have a couple of pairs from this seller.
After I took them out, they shrank down and are now just basically moderately stretched out ear piercings. I wear stainless steel captive hoops in them.
I also like that ox-ring septum piercing thing but would never get one because I have pierced my own nose with a safety pin and piercing cartilage freaks me out as a result, and also because I would not then be employable in my chosen pink collar gig. (Most people at work assumed that the plugs were just regular earrings.)
I dunno, it was popular with a slightly younger and hipper crowd in 2003-04 with whom I was running due to an unexpected short term job, my ear piercings were kind of stretched out anyway, it seemed like the thing to do at the time.
I don't think that grown adults with nose piercings have a leg to stand on in any conversation about gauged ears, because, not to put too fine a point on it, I know from experience that one gets mucous, as it were, clotted around the piercing when one has a bad cold, and it can be hella gross. Although honestly I enjoyed having my nose pierced when I had it pierced, but I got arrested at a protest and the cops made me take all my piercings out (how punk rock is that?) and it was just too much trouble to deal with after that.
Oh, very sorry about the poor kittie. How horribly sad.
OT: Can the Mineshaft recommend a reasonably-priced hotel in roughly-central Berlin for a night or two for the discerning pilgrim?
She'd freeze the earlobe with an ice cube, mark the spot with an eyeliner pencil, sterilize the needle in a cigarette lighter flame, and wham, push it straight through.
When I was in elementary school I watched a pair of older kids do that. It kind of freaked me out at the time.
but I'm pretty sure white people generally have less tendency toward keloid scarring than other races.
I thought of this, but figured it wouldn't be relevant since the actual injury of ear-piercing was long over, so any keloid scarring would already be there. I know nothing of how skin works, but that was my thought process.
Thanks for the kitty condolences, all. I'm sort of mopey. (Still at work, hasn't happened yet.)
I feel like there is not one person on earth whose face benefits from a septum piercing.
47: my fingers searched in vain for a like button.
I'm sorry about your cat. Are you still planning the kitten tattoo?
Mopey seems normal and appropriate. You have been doing so much for that kitty and it's good that you were able to decide when more would be too much.
76- I stayed here a few years ago on the EU's dime so I'm guessing it's relatively cheap- hotel booking site looks like ~130 euro, but discount sites list it at about half that. Small but clean rooms, decent included breakfast.
Holiday Inn Express Berlin City Centre
Stresemann St 49, 10963
Very sorry to hear about your cat, Heebie. That's tough.
I got my ears pierced with a sewing needle in the school dormitory when I was 15. It was quite a craze at the time, and one girl in particular was in high demand for her piercing skills. She'd freeze the earlobe with an ice cube, mark the spot with an eyeliner pencil, sterilize the needle in a cigarette lighter flame, and wham, push it straight through and then, I hope, put on a wig and sang a satirical song in her pajamas about the prim girl whose ear she had pierced.
Oh, I know that hotel. It's pretty central, and close walking distance to a bunch of U-Bahn and S-Bahn lines. My dad stayed there once and was pretty into the breakfast.
The breakfast had a whole lot of meat, which may be the standard for Germany but was still notable.
My older girls don't have their ears pierced because they never wanted them done - Kid B talks about getting bits of of her ear other than the lobe pierced, but I don't know if she'll ever get round to it. Kid C got hers done a couple of years ago, when she was ten. She mostly wore hoops then but can only wear studs for school.
I got mine done when I was twelve - I had some teeth pulled out before I got braces, and I persuaded my mum to pay for ear piercing because I couldn't put the teeth under my pillow! And then got them done a second time a couple of years later, and then a couple of years after that got a third in one ear. And then didn't wear earrings for a while, and by the time I went to college, I just had two holes in one ear that hadn't closed up. And then when I had kids, I let those holes close up too. Wonder if I'll ever bother having them pierced again.
Really sorry about your cat, Heebie.
76: We stayed here last year. Quite central, nice owners and breakfast, comfortable room, and more interesting generally than a chain hotel.
I got my tongue pierced when I was about 20, for very transparent "look how edgy I am" reasons, but took it out about seven years later when I started to get worried about damage to my enamel, and the desire to seem edgy had come to seem sad. But now I'm edgy again because of my calf tattoo, I guess!
Where are you going to get the calf put on?
Heebie, if you're really edgy, you'll get that cat carcass stitched to your body.
29: so, plugs is funny unless they have great ab isolations. Double or nothing. (Or they are loved or charismatic enough to be forgiven anything; infinite to nothing.)
||Off topic, but only sort of because this always counts as on-topic for contemporary Unfogged: this is what everyone should actually read about California water.. Simple, clear, not alarmist, not complacent, not ideological, sums it up. |>
Somebody had a baby at the Wendy's in Squirrel Hill. The newspaper article says it was in Hazelwood, but the newspaper is either confused by the many pointless boundaries of Pittsburgh or just figured that both fast food and babies are more of a thing in Hazelwood.
My mother wouldn't let me get my ears pierced because according to her only fast girls did. I finally got mine pierced while super drunk in college when I was 21. Yay! This was the extent of my rebellion, which was probably part of her plan.
I am planning on letting my girls pierce ears if they choose when they get bahtmitvah'd. No other piercings or tattoos, though.
Yeah, I was supposed to be allowed to get my ears pierced at 13 or 14 but when the pediatrician's daughter, the other holdout in my grade, got hers done, my mom gave in and mine were pierced when I was 12.
97: Right on all counts. And it's such a pain to get into and out of that parking lot, as long as you're there, you might as well stick around, have a baby, y'know, whatever.
87 is why I love Smearcase.
And Heebie, much love to you and the kitty.