Where Would You Take Your Child To Have Their Ears Pierced? (university, grow up)

[PoppySead]

Originally Posted by Fleur66

I'm not a big fan of Claire's for a lot of reasons, especially because the area where they usually do the piercing you are usually on public display for every passer by.

As far as infection goes, my own opinion on this is that if you are taking a younger kid who doesn't really understand the precautions that go along with getting your ears pierced...infection is more likely to happen.

Yea and I as found out you should clean them forever. Not just right after they are done. If you get a nick in there from a sharp pair of earrings they can get infected down the road and it's usually something people ignore until the problem gets bigger and you have to let them close up. Always clean your ears. It will save you any future trouble. It's hard to notice a small nick in there until it gets an infection. I was so use to them I didn't take care of them properly.

I almost think gauges are better because of this. Small holes are easy to cut when changing out earrings often. Gauges usually stay in place and it's an easier hole to deal with.

[rezfreak]

Originally Posted by Zimbochick

Thanks for posting that, they look really nice. I think I had a mental image of the more puckered look.

The puckered look is when people gauge their ears too fast (as i referred earlier as a "blow out"). If you take it slow and let the holes heal, they wont do that.

Originally Posted by JustJulia

Sooooooo sharing that last part with her.

Thank you for the pictures. Is the smallest gauge basically just a step up from a regular pierce?

On average, most ear piercings are either a 18 or 20 gauge (although usually 20, but 18 can be common for some earrings).

The next gauge up would be a 16, which you will typically see is the size of eyebrow piercings or lip piercings, stuff like that. The gauges go up by numbers of 2 (16, 14, 12, etc). Going up to the next gauge at that small wouldnt be very noticeable, but may placate her desire to "gauge".

I'll be honest, when I was a teen, my parents were against me gauging my ears, so I did it in secret. They didnt even notice until i was at about a 10 gauge. LOL.

[rezfreak]

I thought i would mention, you can find "normal" looking earrings for gauged ears too. Just another picture for reference - these earrings are a 4 gauge.

http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/315805_10150286171665882_502725881_8370297_5316554 7_n.jpg (broken link)

[GrandviewGloria]

Originally Posted by JustJulia

Is there a difference between decorating one's ear lobes with jewelry and wearing designer clothing or decorating one's house? You have posted at length about buying expensive couture at discount stores or on ebay in order to fit in with your friends. I don't see why one is okay but not the other.

Oh, I think the issue, for me, is about the 'mutilation' aspect of it, and the socioeconomic implications of that mutilation.

When I was a kid, there were girls in the 'community' who'd pierce your ears. It was a rite of passage, sort of, for little girls to get their ears pierced. And here were these older girls, with their needles and rubbing alcohol; all officious and helpful. These were the same sort of girls who held pillows over the mouths of girls (to muffle their screams) when boys in the 'community' treated them to another little 'rite of passage'. So helpful.

And I'd see the results of these piercings: the redness, the cheap little earrings, which grew progressively more 'expensive' (starting with plastic things they sold at the convenience store...then 'gold-plated', then 'gold-filled', then with 'genuine spinels' (you haven't lived, until you've heard underclass Mississippians pronounce 'Spinel')...all the way to 'rich' school secretaries, with their fine diamond chips from Service Merchandise). "Well, I hate to brag, but the company certified these are flawless stones! You know, I've been savin', and they're lettin' me pay a little each month..."

Well, I initially drooled over the things in the Service Merchandise catalogues, too. But while digging through the trash of the 'rich' people for things to read, I also encountered Town & Country. And by the time I was 8 or so, I saw the difference between the things in T&C, and those in the Service Merchandise catalogue. The catalogue showed ugly, modernesque designs. Maybe the stuff had 'real diamonds' and 'real gold'. But the merch seemed to be made for one kind of people, while the stuff in the Town & Country ads seemed for a better kind of people. That was an awakening...a conceptual leap which eventually took me out of the world into which I'd been born. There was a whole world, somewhere, for a different kind of people than those around me. People in the better world picked one kind of thing. People in my world picked an inferior kind of thing.

And I'd been born at the bottom of my wretched world. I was so poor and ugly, nobody tried to pierce my ears. And neighborhood boys were not conspiring to get me down and pop my ..... I lucked up. I made it to college with my ears (etc.) intact.

And there I was, first semester, in the classiest clothes I could find at the thrift shops. My garments were cheap and faded, all with K-mart type labels (about all that is sold in rural Mississippi). But I'd figured out that avoiding color and pattern neutralized the cheapness. (!!! And there was a real Steam Iron in the dorm, and we could use it!!!) (remember, I grew up in a house with only one light bulb, and no running water)

When they were asking me what I wanted to major in, I said I didn't know about majors. But I wanted to find out about money and rich people, so I could work for rich people (the thought of actually becoming one of the rich people could not have entered my head...just working for them seemed a long shot at the time...probably impossible, but I was gonna try). The kindly angels working Registration looked at each other, and at my ACT scores, and put me in Economics.

So there I am in Economics 101, and there are these girls like I've never seen, before...not in real life. They look like they've stepped out of the New Yorker, or one of the articles Town & Country did on New England or Connecticut or 'The Hamptons'. A couple seem to know one another. They're wearing khakis; starched white buttondowns, with the sleeves artfully rolled-up; cotton summer sweaters; car shoes; Tank Watches; virtually no other jewelry...and unpierced ears.

The rest of America was in mid-segue, between 'Disco' and 'Dynasty'. Hair was big. Makeup was garish. Clothes were sooooo over the top. Big, tacky earrings/big, tacky clothes. But here were these girls, looking like they'd just taken the ferry from Long Island back to Connecticut....leaving Southampton early in the season, because too many 'New People' were showing up: so restrained, so classic, so WASPy.

It took me a while, but later I learned that the words I'd read in articles on the really classy people... the ones above the flashy people... those words: 'waspy', 'FFV' (First Families of Virginia), 'puritanical', 'aristocratic', 'old money', applied to these girls. And soon, I'd come to realize that another revered term applied to them... 'from The Delta'. They were all from fine old Delta families (who'd lost their money in the agricultural crisis engineered by Kennedy and Johnson).

But these gals were there, at that poor little university, determined to make that money back. They would glance at me in kindly and curious ways. "You were so poor and wretched. But we knew there was something exceptional about you. From the way you were dressed, we knew you weren't just some little Tonya. I mean, we could tell you were trying: and that you knew to try. I mean, who around here even knows they should try to be something better?" They and I would interact marginally, and I could tell they were people of good will. So, when the coursework seemed utterly impenetrable, I was the one who approached them with the idea of forming a study group. And there were a couple of guys in the group (who turned out to be Gay...one of whom still handles everything in our lives pertaining to PR/Ads/Graphics).

So, I'd assembled my first working team. And my 'team' took me under their collective wing, socially. They taught me oral hygiene. They taught me about Hair Conditioner (revelation!). They cautioned me against visible makeup, nail polish, lace, ruffles, high heels... Basically, all the mundane facets and strategies of upper-middle-class life, they taught me.

Then, Oh boy! Suddenly, I'm pregnant and married, and piling into a rented van (soon to be filled to the roof with bargains) with these Delta girls and our Gay cohort, and driving to Greenville, for the Saks Fifth Avenue Sale at Steinmart....the first Steinmart...

Well, by this time, I'm LOADED. My new husband and I are at school on scholarships. We have Work Study. We work odd jobs around campus and near campus. I have seventy five Dollars to spend...a FORTUNE at the beginning of the Eighties (to me, at least). I'm about to discover where all those Cable Knit Sweaters came from.

All year long, the buyers at Saks used to toss damaged merchandise/returned merchandise/marked-out-of-stock-after-final-markdown....into big boxes labeled 'Steinmart'. My soon-to-be Decorator, who, as a penniless waif, somehow managed to summer on Fire Island, actually met some Saks Buyers, who were delighted to know what 'Steinmart' was, and who was buying their stuff.

Anyway, Jake Stein would stand there in that store, pricing things as they came from those giant boxes: ripped lingerie, old socks....then a sterling wine cooler from Buccellati, a Cashmere sweater from Scotland, and Italian handbag. Eight bucks for the sweater. Five bucks for the handbag. All around Mr. Stein was pandemonium. People digging through piles of clothing, for fine English dress shirts, Fendi ties, silk dresses from Pucci... All for pennies on the dollar. Soon, I could reach into a pile, and know I'd hit Angora...or silk...or Cashmere...or Sea Island Cotton.

Most people there were looking for the pedestrian labels 'most people' aspired to. They didn't know what to do with the 'wierd stuff'. I think people left, because they couldn't find "Members Only" jackets, "Guess Jeans", "Topsiders", "Duck Head"...whatever proles & dinkies aspired to, back then. But the Black Debutantes from Chicago knew what was good. My new friends knew what was good. I discovered I knew the better labels (and quality design) better than anybody (but those Chicago Debs), because of those years I'd spent, memorizing every page of those ragged issues of Town & Country.

So, I knew to latch onto Burberry, to dress DH in Armani, Hilditch & Key, Fendi ties, Brass Boot shoes...

Yeah, later, I moved up to the absolute top labels, during the golden years of Ebay. Still later, we came to the point where we could walk into Saks, and pay full price. Later, we could go into Battaglia, in Beverly Hills. Finally, we were at the point where we could go into the little shops in Naples...or directly to the little workshops in the hills there... and I could sit at the showings in Milan...taking notes, knowing I could go in for a fitting, if I liked something.

My look is a lot showier than what works for Delta Aristocrats and Connecticut WASPS. My coloring is different. My bone structure is different. I don't have their long Viking/Sephardic arms, or their short torsos and long legs. In business, we dress alike (tailored and dark), although the few pieces of jewelry I wear are massive, contrasted with their simple strings of Pearls.

Outside business, they're in khakis. I (if not gardening in my Carhartts), slip into something edgy and high-concept. I'm probably the only woman on Iron Mountain who dresses as I do. When I go into town, to an exclusive athletic club, I'm overdressed (which makes me a dream girl of the Governing Board, who frown upon sloppy presentation, when one is entering and leaving the club). When we go to the organic eateries, heads turn. People don't disapprove. We feel completely 'accepted'. But my look hardly is calculated to make me 'blend in'.

In Mississippi, I got a lot of hostile stares, of the "Who does she think she is" variety. 'Fitting-in', however, was never an option for me. I've gotta be who I am. I've gotta do what works for me. But you know, enough people have responded to my look, in the ways I needed them to, for me to go where I would not have dared dream of going. Plenty of people who have 'fit in' and 'been approved of' have gone nowhere in their lives. I know of plenty of 'normal' 'former Cheerleaders' and 'Prom Queens', who now are all-but-destitute.

And there are moments, when my friends and I are 'decorated for Kabuki', formal events when we have to have someone put us in makeup, when my friends wear 'the family Emeralds', and I send to the Lock Box, for my big rocks. At those events, we sort of look alike. I'll wear earrings, but clip-ons. They go on my ears, just before the car door is opened, and are handed to the Guard in front, the second I'm back in the car.

In any event, what I wear is about becoming and being who I have become. I don't see pierced ears as being part of the world I have come to inhabit. To me, they belong back in that mudhole where I grew up, on those girls now prematurely old, worrying about their grandbabies' proms and little league football games, and who likes who, and what Beyonce is doing, and who will be a finalist on what reality show.

Dressing well helped make me who I wanted to become. Pierced ears were part of the embodiment what I was trying not to be.

[Zimbochick]

Originally Posted by GrandviewGloria

Oh, I think the issue, for me, is about the 'mutilation' aspect of it, and the socioeconomic implications of that mutilation.

I'll wear earrings, but clip-ons. They go on my ears, just before the car door is opened, and are handed to the Guard in front, the second I'm back in the car.

In any event, what I wear is about becoming and being who I have become. I don't see pierced ears as being part of the world I have come to inhabit. To me, they belong back in that mudhole where I grew up, on those girls now prematurely old, worrying about their grandbabies' proms and little league football games, and who likes who, and what Beyonce is doing, and who will be a finalist on what reality show.

Dressing well helped make me who I wanted to become. Pierced ears were part of the embodiment what I was trying not to be.

Bizarre! So what you are saying is only trashy sluts get their ears pierced? And clip on earrings are different in appearance from pierced earrings how exactly?

[funisart]

Originally Posted by GrandviewGloria

Oh, I think the issue, for me, is about the 'mutilation' aspect of it, and the socioeconomic implications of that mutilation.

When I was a kid, there were girls in the 'community' who'd pierce your ears. It was a rite of passage, sort of, for little girls to get their ears pierced. And here were these older girls, with their needles and rubbing alcohol; all officious and helpful. These were the same sort of girls who held pillows over the mouths of girls (to muffle their screams) when boys in the 'community' treated them to another little 'rite of passage'. So helpful.

And I'd see the results of these piercings: the redness, the cheap little earrings, which grew progressively more 'expensive' (starting with plastic things they sold at the convenience store...then 'gold-plated', then 'gold-filled', then with 'genuine spinels' (you haven't lived, until you've heard underclass Mississippians pronounce 'Spinel')...all the way to 'rich' school secretaries, with their fine diamond chips from Service Merchandise). "Well, I hate to brag, but the company certified these are flawless stones! You know, I've been savin', and they're lettin' me pay a little each month..."

Well, I initially drooled over the things in the Service Merchandise catalogues, too. But while digging through the trash of the 'rich' people for things to read, I also encountered Town & Country. And by the time I was 8 or so, I saw the difference between the things in T&C, and those in the Service Merchandise catalogue. The catalogue showed ugly, modernesque designs. Maybe the stuff had 'real diamonds' and 'real gold'. But the merch seemed to be made for one kind of people, while the stuff in the Town & Country ads seemed for a better kind of people. That was an awakening...a conceptual leap which eventually took me out of the world into which I'd been born. There was a whole world, somewhere, for a different kind of people than those around me. People in the better world picked one kind of thing. People in my world picked an inferior kind of thing.

And I'd been born at the bottom of my wretched world. I was so poor and ugly, nobody tried to pierce my ears. And neighborhood boys were not conspiring to get me down and pop my ..... I lucked up. I made it to college with my ears (etc.) intact.

And there I was, first semester, in the classiest clothes I could find at the thrift shops. My garments were cheap and faded, all with K-mart type labels (about all that is sold in rural Mississippi). But I'd figured out that avoiding color and pattern neutralized the cheapness. (!!! And there was a real Steam Iron in the dorm, and we could use it!!!) (remember, I grew up in a house with only one light bulb, and no running water)

When they were asking me what I wanted to major in, I said I didn't know about majors. But I wanted to find out about money and rich people, so I could work for rich people (the thought of actually becoming one of the rich people could not have entered my head...just working for them seemed a long shot at the time...probably impossible, but I was gonna try). The kindly angels working Registration looked at each other, and at my ACT scores, and put me in Economics.

So there I am in Economics 101, and there are these girls like I've never seen, before...not in real life. They look like they've stepped out of the New Yorker, or one of the articles Town & Country did on New England or Connecticut or 'The Hamptons'. A couple seem to know one another. They're wearing khakis; starched white buttondowns, with the sleeves artfully rolled-up; cotton summer sweaters; car shoes; Tank Watches; virtually no other jewelry...and unpierced ears.

The rest of America was in mid-segue, between 'Disco' and 'Dynasty'. Hair was big. Makeup was garish. Clothes were sooooo over the top. Big, tacky earrings/big, tacky clothes. But here were these girls, looking like they'd just taken the ferry from Long Island back to Connecticut....leaving Southampton early in the season, because too many 'New People' were showing up: so restrained, so classic, so WASPy.

It took me a while, but later I learned that the words I'd read in articles on the really classy people... the ones above the flashy people... those words: 'waspy', 'FFV' (First Families of Virginia), 'puritanical', 'aristocratic', 'old money', applied to these girls. And soon, I'd come to realize that another revered term applied to them... 'from The Delta'. They were all from fine old Delta families (who'd lost their money in the agricultural crisis engineered by Kennedy and Johnson).

But these gals were there, at that poor little university, determined to make that money back. They would glance at me in kindly and curious ways. "You were so poor and wretched. But we knew there was something exceptional about you. From the way you were dressed, we knew you weren't just some little Tonya. I mean, we could tell you were trying: and that you knew to try. I mean, who around here even knows they should try to be something better?" They and I would interact marginally, and I could tell they were people of good will. So, when the coursework seemed utterly impenetrable, I was the one who approached them with the idea of forming a study group. And there were a couple of guys in the group (who turned out to be Gay...one of whom still handles everything in our lives pertaining to PR/Ads/Graphics).

So, I'd assembled my first working team. And my 'team' took me under their collective wing, socially. They taught me oral hygiene. They taught me about Hair Conditioner (revelation!). They cautioned me against visible makeup, nail polish, lace, ruffles, high heels... Basically, all the mundane facets and strategies of upper-middle-class life, they taught me.

Then, Oh boy! Suddenly, I'm pregnant and married, and piling into a rented van (soon to be filled to the roof with bargains) with these Delta girls and our Gay cohort, and driving to Greenville, for the Saks Fifth Avenue Sale at Steinmart....the first Steinmart...

Well, by this time, I'm LOADED. My new husband and I are at school on scholarships. We have Work Study. We work odd jobs around campus and near campus. I have seventy five Dollars to spend...a FORTUNE at the beginning of the Eighties (to me, at least). I'm about to discover where all those Cable Knit Sweaters came from.

All year long, the buyers at Saks used to toss damaged merchandise/returned merchandise/marked-out-of-stock-after-final-markdown....into big boxes labeled 'Steinmart'. My soon-to-be Decorator, who, as a penniless waif, somehow managed to summer on Fire Island, actually met some Saks Buyers, who were delighted to know what 'Steinmart' was, and who was buying their stuff.

Anyway, Jake Stein would stand there in that store, pricing things as they came from those giant boxes: ripped lingerie, old socks....then a sterling wine cooler from Buccellati, a Cashmere sweater from Scotland, and Italian handbag. Eight bucks for the sweater. Five bucks for the handbag. All around Mr. Stein was pandemonium. People digging through piles of clothing, for fine English dress shirts, Fendi ties, silk dresses from Pucci... All for pennies on the dollar. Soon, I could reach into a pile, and know I'd hit Angora...or silk...or Cashmere...or Sea Island Cotton.

Most people there were looking for the pedestrian labels 'most people' aspired to. They didn't know what to do with the 'wierd stuff'. I think people left, because they couldn't find "Members Only" jackets, "Guess Jeans", "Topsiders", "Duck Head"...whatever proles & dinkies aspired to, back then. But the Black Debutantes from Chicago knew what was good. My new friends knew what was good. I discovered I knew the better labels (and quality design) better than anybody (but those Chicago Debs), because of those years I'd spent, memorizing every page of those ragged issues of Town & Country.

So, I knew to latch onto Burberry, to dress DH in Armani, Hilditch & Key, Fendi ties, Brass Boot shoes...

Yeah, later, I moved up to the absolute top labels, during the golden years of Ebay. Still later, we came to the point where we could walk into Saks, and pay full price. Later, we could go into Battaglia, in Beverly Hills. Finally, we were at the point where we could go into the little shops in Naples...or directly to the little workshops in the hills there... and I could sit at the showings in Milan...taking notes, knowing I could go in for a fitting, if I liked something.

My look is a lot showier than what works for Delta Aristocrats and Connecticut WASPS. My coloring is different. My bone structure is different. I don't have their long Viking/Sephardic arms, or their short torsos and long legs. In business, we dress alike (tailored and dark), although the few pieces of jewelry I wear are massive, contrasted with their simple strings of Pearls.

Outside business, they're in khakis. I (if not gardening in my Carhartts), slip into something edgy and high-concept. I'm probably the only woman on Iron Mountain who dresses as I do. When I go into town, to an exclusive athletic club, I'm overdressed (which makes me a dream girl of the Governing Board, who frown upon sloppy presentation, when one is entering and leaving the club). When we go to the organic eateries, heads turn. People don't disapprove. We feel completely 'accepted'. But my look hardly is calculated to make me 'blend in'.

In Mississippi, I got a lot of hostile stares, of the "Who does she think she is" variety. 'Fitting-in', however, was never an option for me. I've gotta be who I am. I've gotta do what works for me. But you know, enough people have responded to my look, in the ways I needed them to, for me to go where I would not have dared dream of going. Plenty of people who have 'fit in' and 'been approved of' have gone nowhere in their lives. I know of plenty of 'normal' 'former Cheerleaders' and 'Prom Queens', who now are all-but-destitute.

And there are moments, when my friends and I are 'decorated for Kabuki', formal events when we have to have someone put us in makeup, when my friends wear 'the family Emeralds', and I send to the Lock Box, for my big rocks. At those events, we sort of look alike. I'll wear earrings, but clip-ons. They go on my ears, just before the car door is opened, and are handed to the Guard in front, the second I'm back in the car.

In any event, what I wear is about becoming and being who I have become. I don't see pierced ears as being part of the world I have come to inhabit. To me, they belong back in that mudhole where I grew up, on those girls now prematurely old, worrying about their grandbabies' proms and little league football games, and who likes who, and what Beyonce is doing, and who will be a finalist on what reality show.

Dressing well helped make me who I wanted to become. Pierced ears were part of the embodiment what I was trying not to be.

Ok so you wouldn't take your non-existant daughter to Claire's--

Bless Your Heart You must be so very proud of yourself.

[GrandviewGloria]

Originally Posted by Zimbochick

Bizarre! So what you are saying is only trashy sluts get their ears pierced? And clip on earrings are different in appearance from pierced earrings how exactly?

They differ, in that there are not little holes in your ears, when you take them off.

[Kibbiekat]

Gloria, it is painfully obvious that you have a skewed view of things because of what you came from and what you are now. People from all walks of life have pierced ears. It has been socially acceptable in all social classes for several decades. You have a right to your opinion, but I have to wonder... when you see a woman, do you automatically judge her based on whether or not her ears are pierced?

[DewDropInn]

I don't think anyone at Battaglia notices if ears are pierced or not, Gloria. In SoCal it's not linked to money or status. Some people do it. Some people don't. Nobody cares.

[Zimbochick]

Originally Posted by GrandviewGloria

They differ, in that there are not little holes in your ears, when you take them off.

My point was if a person is so concerned with appearances, what others think, social standing, and how things appear, then wearing a bauble on an earlobe, whether a clip-on or a pierced earring would be perceived as trashy, no? Seeing as how it's impossible to tell which it is.

And for the record ear piercing was first recorded in Persepolis, I'm sure since that time the socio-economic standing of those with pierced lobes has run the gamut.