Opinion: Piercing, tattoo fads become rites of passage

The only way ears can be pierced is to be with them during the piercing process.

But many folks claim to have seen such a sign. It’s an urban legend, isn’t it?

When it comes to signs pertaining to ear piercing, a more practical one is, “With the sale of earrings, someone with little or no medical training will, with a sharp object, cut a hole through your ear lobes and poke pieces of metal through them.”

To me, cutting holes in the body should be done only when absolutely necessary and under medical conditions.

Alas, my “no pierced ears at no time” doctrine has pretty much crashed and burned.

Pierced ears are commonplace and no longer restricted to women. Getting holes poked in earlobes has become a sort of American rite of passage. Most of the women in my life have pierced ears. And with just about everyone – including football players as big as UPS trucks – wearing earrings, I guess I’ll stop railing about pierced ears.

I’m not so wishy-washy about other body piercing.

What people elect to do to their bodies in the name of adornment is beyond my grasp.

I may be absurdly out of the mainstream, but piercing lips and eyebrows or drilling a hole through the nose in the name of beauty seem to me to be a tad off plumb.

Piercing of ears, lips, noses and eyebrows seems curiously tame when compared to drilling a hole through the tongue to make way for a piece of jewelry. The very thought of such a thing causes a shiver down my spine.

The location on the body of some jewelry is, well, in places that can’t be mentioned here. No application of human logic can account for why anyone would want jewelry in such spots. Logical or not, some do want it, anyway.

It seems that just about any spot where skin can be penetrated with a sharp object is a potential area to adorn jewelry.

I might suggest kneecap piercing. Think about it: Pull the loose skin together, poke some holes in each kneecap, insert silver or gold plated safety pins, and a new fad is born. You heard it here first.

By now, it must be obvious that I have very little affection to self-inflicted wounds in search of attractiveness. Poking holes in the body is right up there with sticking needles in the skin in order to inject ink.

In my opinion, tattoos and body piercing are two peas in a pod. I know that some folks have small, tasteful tattoos that aren’t likely to cause embarrassment. They can be quite nice. Like pierced ears, they are OK if you like that sort of thing.

I often wonder about young guys I knew in the Navy who thought tattoos were necessary to be fully certified old salts. I wonder how some of them feel today about their youthful tattoos on forearms with something like a snake wrapped around a bloody dagger accompanied with the inscription “Death Before Dishonor”? I wonder if the tattoos aged gently along with them?

I have often thought about the young men who had the names of their girlfriends tattooed prominently on their person. For their sake, I hope they married those girlfriends.

Some tattoos are quite artistic. Quite a few men and women believe large splashy tattoos make them attractive; the more tattoos, the better. What happens when for whatever reason they might like the artwork to disappear? I understand tattoos can be removed, but the process can be painful, expensive and time-consuming. The more tattoos the greater the pain, cost and time required.

I’ll pass on a lifetime of pictures drawn on my body.

Come to think about it, the urban legend sign could read, “Ears pierced and backside tattooed while you wait.”

That would work.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.[[In-content Ad]]