The Philosophy of Wonky-Facedness

Yesterday, I went to visit my little sisters in College Town, and came home with pierced ears. I suppose, at 24, it was none too soon. I’d been meaning to get my ears done for a while, but had never gotten around to it.

I’d read a few articles on the relative benefits of hand piercing versus gun piercing a couple years ago, which made a pretty good case for hand piercing. According to those articles:
1. Hand piercing is more sanitary—all relevant parts are single-use.
2. There’s less tissue trauma caused by the sharp needle than by the blunt ear post shot from the gun.
3. Hand piercing allows a ring rather than a stud to be used as a starter, which means less tangled hair, less poking into the neck, and more room for the ears to swell should they have a mind to do so.
4. Hand piercers tend to be well-trained professional. Gun operators tend to be hastily-trained teenagers at high-turnover retail businesses.
5. Hand piercers work in tattoo parlors, where sterilization and precision are extremely important. Gun operators work in retail, where volume is extremely important.
6. Gun piercing is contrary to the “philosophy” of body modification because piercing guns can only be used on ear lobes.

I was almost sold when that pesky sixth reason came and stole my thunder. Come to think of it, these weren’t exactly neutral sources. Does reading articles by professional piercers about the dangers of mechanizing piercing make any more sense than reading articles by Victorian cabinet makers about the dangers of mechanizing cabinetry?

I don’t know, but I do like me a good, handmade cabinet. On the other hand, handmade dove joints are always kind of wonky.

Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any neutral sources. The makers of the piercing guns aren’t very well represented on the internet. The opinions of the American Medical Association on hand vs. gun piercing are not widely spread. I guess they’re wasting all that brain power on piddling things like cancer and bedsores.

It turned out that Youngest Sister had been thinking about getting pierced for a while also. When I suggested it as a Thing to Do on our Sisters’ Day Out, Middle Sister, who had her ears done at Claire’s for her fourteenth birthday, pounced. Off we were to the tattoo parlor.

Our piercer was a petite blonde with some “tribal” tattoo (are tribal tattoos actually related to a tribe, or are they an American invention, like tribal belly dancing?) spreading across her chest and poking down into her camisole. Her hiphugger capris revealed twin black bandages over brand new work. She was meticulous, wiping off the mark on my sister’s left ear and repositioning it by a millimeter three times. My ears she got marked in one go. “Good?” she asked. “Good,” my sisters confirmed.

Middle Sister revealed that her ear piercings were quite uneven. Maybe there’s something to this down-with-mall-boutique-piercings crowd.

Youngest Sister went first. She winced, but did not jump. Then me. It hurt a little more than giving blood, but was over much quicker. Youngest Sister and I popped some Aleve, but Y.S. later declared that her ear still hated the piercer. Mine never hurt unless I accidentally tugged them, though the left ear did turn a lovely subdued purple with a litte network of tiny, bright red lines.

I examined them today, and discovered that the right earring is a little lower than the left. I checked the earlobes. Perfectly matched. But still…the right earring was definitely lower. Oh, dear. My right ear is lower than my left ear by about half a centimeter. I’m just uneven all over.

When I was about 12, my mom and I went to see the orthodontist to see what progress we had made and what was left to do. As he flashed pictures of my face from all angles across the screen, my mom’s eye was caught by a frontal picture with the line between my front teeth extended up and down by several inches.

“Here teeth aren’t in line!” my mom exclaimed.

“What?” asked the orthodontist.

“Her teeth don’t line up with her nose!”

The orthodontist studied the picture for second, then lowered his eyes and said quietly. “Her teeth line up with the midline of her face.”

So now I have beautiful earrings and an awry face. Such is life.