Ear Piercing
Sat., November 19, 07:39 AM
Recycling again, in part because we’re cleaning out our A0L account. This is a really old article that I once wrote in response to a column written in the newspaper. (The columnist never got back to me, so I don’t know just what kind of reaction it got.) Some years later, my oldest daughter thought it might have a place on the body modification site, and I expanded it to fit their criteria. However, knowing just how offensive some of that might be – to each his (or her) own – I’m including it here for you. Since I’ve written so often about jewelry, I’m beginning to think I have a whole new category.
It's a girl thing, having your ears pierced and getting your first earrings. It's a mother-daughter thing, when you take your daughter to get hers. Whenever I read other women's experiences – their own and their daughters' – I always wonder how many other women recall similar incidents.
Ear piercing has gone in and out of fashion over the years. My mother and her sisters had their ears pierced when they were children in Europe, but they stopped wearing the earrings as soon as they could get away with it. "Too old fashioned," they said, "too old country. We looked like greenhorns." And so they wore screw-on earrings, or clip-ons, very stylish costume jewelry, very American.
European tradition was that piercing the ears would improve one's eyesight. Although we think first of parents who thought they were protecting their children, there were others who believed it. Why would a sixty-year old man wear an earring? Maybe he's a pirate!
I was very happy with clip-ons myself, and I certainly would never have forced my children into having their ears pierced. But when my daughter was twelve, pierced earrings were back in style, and she wanted some. This was her choice of a birthday present, and she insisted. Birthdays are very important holidays in our family, special days that you don't have to share; "big" presents come on birthdays, not on Christmas or Hanukkah. And so I agreed that she could have earrings.
Going back a generation or so, a girl had three possible methods of getting her ears pierced. She might know an amateur who could pierce them for her. (My sister did that.) She might choose to go to a doctor, and many parents preferred that, feeling it was much safer. There were no such things as piercing shops, but once a month a registered nurse came to the mall to pierce ears. It was "free" piercing if you bought a pair of earrings, and many women waited till the nurse's Saturday. My friends suggested that the mall was the best choice; the nurse knew what she was doing, and she pierced symmetrically. (Some doctors had been known to pierce the "easiest" part of the lobe, whether that was the prettiest place or not. What does a man know about jewelry? And who knew where to find a female doctor?)
So, on the appointed day, I drove my daughter to the mall. We stood in long, long lines – a month's worth of customers – for the privilege of signing up and paying for earrings. Since my daughter was under sixteen, I also had to sign a promise that I would help her care for her ears until they healed. And then we stood in yet another line again to wait for the nurse and her piercing gun.
Piercing guns have a checkered reputation these days, as there is some danger of splashing and the plastic parts cannot be autoclaved. But we're talking about a more innocent time; no one worried about hepatitis or AIDS. I watched that nurse carefully, and she certainly took all reasonable precautions. All of the earrings used were gold, which does not react readily with other chemicals – including body fluids. You chose your earrings, which were either all 14K gold or gold with a small gem of some sort. (I suppose you could choose some with real gems - but I didn't see any that day.)
Because the earrings themselves were used to pierce the earlobes, they had pointed studs. Once you selected your earrings, they went into rubbing alcohol, where they soaked while the nurse checked you out. She decided on the best place for your piercing and cleaned your ears with more alcohol. Then your earrings were fitted into the gun, and it was all over before you knew it. No one was sharing needles, because each customer left wearing her own earrings.
Most of those waiting were teenagers or women in their twenties, though there were also some toddlers and infants. (Just when you think mothers are becoming modern, they go back to the old fashions.) How mothers expected to keep those wounds clean on babies is something I'll never understand. There were no boys. Very few men wore earrings, and it was generally accepted that there was something "funny" about any man who did.
Finally we came to the head of the line. It was my daughter's turn – and she refused! She was afraid it would hurt, and she would not sit down to be pierced. I was so disgusted with her – and I had already paid – so I sat down myself and had my own ears pierced. And that is how come I'm wearing gold hoops today.
Naturally, once she saw that I didn't die of pain, my ambivalent child decided that she would like to have her ears pierced after all. And so we went back to the end of the lines and began the process all over again. She did indeed get her earrings that day, even though she felt a little dizzy after they were inserted.
Today, as an adult, my daughter is no longer afraid of needles. The tattoo artists are her friends. She has worn multiple rings not only in her earlobes, but in her nose and eyebrow as well. You never can tell how kids will turn out.
