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I think it’s interesting to see what a body fad becomes these days. When I was in high school, I know you are thinking “the stone age”, the big deal was guys getting their ears pierced. Today that is as common as coloring your hair or painting your nails. Then came the resurgence of tattoos. I fell into that fad and I have to be honest I don’t regret getting some ink on my body, but once you get it you take it for granted. It just becomes part of your body like a birthmark or mole. It’s just there.
Then came along the body piercing. I will admit that I had multiple ear rings at one time, but due to my profession those are a thing of the past thanks to conservative America. No big deal, take the earrings out the holes close up and you are left with a tiny pseudo hole of times gone by.
The thing I see more often is this ‘gauging‘ of piercings. This to me is a little bit odd. Stretching the holes in your earlobes, nose, etc. reminds me of the African culture of lip discs. You know the people who place plates in their lip holes giving them the impression of a HUGE bottom lip. I guess this could be beneficial in a way if you did not have any paper plates or own dinnerware. When these people take the plates out, they are left with a bottom lip that is not attached and really stretched out. Kind of nasty in my opinion. But I digress.
Anyhow so you now have these young kids gauging earlobes and other body parts. How do you explain that to your grandchildren when you get old and the fad is long dead? Do you pay the large sum of money to get plastic surgery to fix it? (Possibly the plastic surgeons are subliminally putting those fads out there in order to drum up future business) Or do you just convert it to another use. When I worked in the hospital and would have to draw blood, I met some people who had multiple bled out bluish tattoos on their forearms and would say, ‘ my veins are hard to find but if you stick the needle right in Betty Boops left eye you will hit one’. I consider that repurposing. The old man tattoo met another need. So will the younger generation repurpose their cool gauges of today when they are 60 or 70 years old?? Possibly sliding in their bottle of blood pressure medicine in their earlobe so it’s not forgotten, or use it to hold ball point pens, hook car keys to them, hold their sunglasses, the possibilities are endless if you put your mind to it.
I would like to see gauges on cheeks, then put little plexi-glass windows in them so you can see them eat that would be cool.
Related Articles
- My body needs more metal! (beliefnet.com)
- What’s the big deal, Mom? It’s just a tattoo! (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Body Piercings and Tattoos â the Facts (lifescript.com)
