December 26, 2011 • 33 mins
What is the history of ear and body piercing? How does the underground sexual culture of piercing work? What does Alicia Silverstone have to do with the popularization of belly button piercing? Join Cristen and Caroline as they explore body piercing.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From housetop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And since we're talking about
(00:22):
body piercings today, we decided fair listeners that we would
start off with some personal anecdotes because Caroline and I
both have our ears pierced. Although I never wear earrings anymore,
i'll wear them a lot. I have a kind of
a round face, so I feel like I need to
balance it out sometimes with something shiny next to it.
(00:42):
You wear earrings very well, I just forget about they
might even be closed up by now. I just forget hey,
I mean, I mean, oh, yeah, but I don't know. Well,
I just my mind immediately went to like, oh, you
have to get that repierced. But I guess you don't.
If you don't know, don't Yeah. Um, but let's be
let's back up, because I think for a lot of
(01:04):
women listening, probably and guys too, because I'm sure there
are some some guys out there listening to have their
ears pierced. Getting your ears pierced for the first time.
It's quite a seminal moment, especially if it happens in adolescence,
because I don't know about you, Caroline, but for me, Um,
I'm the youngest in my family and I have I
have two older sisters, and getting the ears pierced at
(01:27):
the age of twelve was this rite of passage. And
I distinctly remember the day I went to get my
ears pierced. I just got simple gold studs. Where did
you go? I went to Merle Norman department store, and
I think that was where my my sisters had gone.
My mom was very insisted on everything being as uniform
(01:48):
as possible for this ear piercing experience. UM. And I
remember going home that night and just staring at myself
in the mirror and I put my I had long hair,
and I pulled my hair up so I could take
a better look at myself with these these bubbles in
my ear lobes, and I thought I was just entrancing.
(02:13):
I remember looking at myself, like in pajamas, with these
simple studs in my ears and being like, well, Christen Gonger,
you are quite vetching. I don't know. I don't know
why I don't know what it was. I was. I
was excited about my my earrings that I wore. Also,
I also got gold studs put in um. When I
(02:34):
was thirteen, my mom took me to the mall and
I just remember thinking like, it's it's time. You know,
I'm gonna go do it. This is happening, my friends
are doing it. I want to do it. I'm I
don't want to be have naked ear lobes forever, but
you know it's going to hurt. Yeah, but you don't
know how much you know. And and for some people
they were like, oh no, no, never problem. I had
(02:55):
never problem. I had a problem. I'll tell you right now.
I had a problem. We went to Claire's. My all
took me to Claires and I hopped right up in
that little ear piercing seat and I'm like, oh my god,
I'm so special. Look like, does he believe at me?
Because I know I'm to get my ears because there
are people like walking back to like picking out their
you know, weird fake plastic jewelry and stuff. Anyway, so
she pulls out this ear piercing gun and I'm like,
(03:18):
oh wait, what is the what do you oh? Okay. Oh,
and then so she draws a little magic marker dots
on my earlibs, which I was like, are these are
you sure they're even? And then like wow, you know,
ear pierced And that really hurt and it was really loud,
and I'm kind of a nervous Nancy, and so she
did she did the both ears, and then I started
to pass out. She's like, all right, all right, get
(03:39):
down on the floor. Get down on the floor. And
so she had me lie down on the floor and
like put my knees up and kind of rock them
back and forth. So here I am, at thirteen years old,
obviously very confident, you know, non troubled age for kids,
lying in the middle of Claire's being like, you know,
why does a sheet at least your ear piercing and
(04:00):
send you off into a bizarre spiral of every narcissism um.
But that's not I don't know if you know this
or not, Caroline, But since we are talking about piercings,
I also when I was eighteen years old, as a
freshman in college and this was post breakup, I got
my nose pierced. I remember, I remember you had a
(04:21):
piercing Yeah, I probably had one when when we met.
And I still remember when I went home for the
first time and my mom saw my I just had
a stud in my nose, and my mom was just
so sweet and she goes, she paused for a minute
and looked at it and goes nods her head slowly. Cool.
(04:45):
That's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. No, Mama, Conger, you
didn't freak out. Well, see, it's interesting that that you
said that you had it done after a breakup, because
I feel like a lot of the stuff we read
about the psychology of piercing, I mean there's a lot
of eeries and a lot of reasons, and you know,
everybody's different, everybody. I did it just because I was
like it's time. But I mean a lot of people
(05:08):
have piercing reasons, like specific motivations, and a lot of
them are something traumatic happened, or they want to they
want to remember something they went through. Yeah, the nose
piercing was definitely a way for me to I don't know,
I felt like it was some kind of um symbol
of my individualism, you know, of being I'm gonna go
(05:31):
I'm gonna do this. You had to go to a
tattoo parlor downtown. I just I don't know. I felt very,
very edgy getting it done because it up until then,
you know, breaking out of my prim and proper gold
studded chill. And by the way, for listeners out there,
I don't. I don't wear my nose piercing anymore, but
I liked it for a long time. So enough about us.
(05:54):
I mean, we could talk about ourselves forever, but we're
here for um. But before we get into the history
of ear piercing and body piercing, because my goodness is
it quite a rich one, let's toss out some statistics
for who has their ears pierced. And this is coming
from the CBC in Canada and Health Canada reported that
(06:16):
between of us women have their ears pierced, but a
lot of us also experience complications from piercing, which we'll
talk about later, Infections and whatnot. Yeah, I read that
you you're actually quite likely to get an infection if
you get your cartilage pierced on your ear because the
(06:36):
blood flow is not significant enough to heal HeLa wound.
So you've got to be really careful about keeping that
stuff clean, and especially if you wear the nickel plated
jewelry lotical of allergies. But we'll get into that a
little bit later. Why don't why don't we kick things
off with a reading from the Bible, please, Kristen, Okay,
(06:58):
this is coming from Genesis. This is the I believe
the n I V. Version for the Bible scholars out there.
I asked her, whose daughter are you? She said, the
daughter of Bethuel's son of Nahor, who Micah bore to him.
Then I put the ring in her nose and the
bracelets on her arm, and that her in there is Rebecca,
(07:24):
wife of Abraham. Yeah, there's a lot of uh jewelry
speak in the Bible. Um. Hebrews war earrings as adornment,
and gold earrings represented wealth, which makes sense. But actually
they they pierced slave's ears too, as a mark of servitude,
and piercing ears goes back at least six thousand years
(07:44):
in the Middle East, but it probably even predates that. Um.
For instance, when I believe it was Uh, they found
Ozsi the iceman, who at the time was like the
oldest um like person ever found well preserved um, and
(08:05):
he not only had markings on him that appeared to
be some kind of primitive tattoo, but also stretched ear lobes. Right,
he was cool. Yeah, they thought that maybe he even
had his ear um ears pierced as well. And it's
one of the most common types of body modification and
also cross cultural right all over the world around history.
(08:27):
In a lot of tribes all around the world, ear
rings and and another jewelry served to display wealth in
cultures that carried their wealth in jewelry um tribes like
the Fulani of West Africa, the Toureg of the Sahara,
and the Bedouins of the Sinai Peninsula. And in a
lot of tribes, the type of earring that you wore mattered.
It could indicate rank. Among many Northwest Coast Northwest American
(08:50):
Coast Indians such as you know there're some in Alaska, um,
the number of holes in one's ear showed the amount
of wealth because the process was expensive. So if you
have whole your whole ear pierced, it meant, oh yeah,
I'm a pretty rich guy. And um. Nose piercings are
also very common and piercing the septum in particular, that
(09:11):
that piece of flesh between your nostrils is probably the
second most common piercing among indigenous peoples, and they're especially
common among warrior tribes and they'll put like they'll pierce
it with pieces of bone or even gold. Um. And
of course piercing is also very common in India, and
Hindu people will pierce a girl's ears and nose twelve
(09:33):
days after birth when she has given her name and um.
It's also a tradition among um some Indian groups too.
I believe you get your nose pierced the day before
I guess if it isn't already the day before your wedding, right,
And there is a tribe in Brazil that used to
pierce boys and girls ears at birth, just you know,
right out of the gate and immediately inserted wooden plug
(09:54):
that would be exchanged as the holes got bigger. So
it's interesting that so many tribes all over the world
have different forms not only of body modification, but of
um kind of steps to take. Because there's that what
what is the tribe that uses the neck rings. I can't,
I don't know off the top of my head, but
that's another one that you know, like as they get older,
they wear more rings or wear bigger ear plugs. To
(10:17):
signify something in particular, it doesn't make themselves seem more beautiful. Yeah, definitely.
Seems like one one common strand among all of these
different piercing practices is um is that idea of rank
and also the right of passage. And I was surprised
to learn that um ear rings were even common among
men in Elizabethan, England. Um Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, and
(10:40):
Francis Drake all wore gold rings in their ears. You
know who else did? Who pirates indeed, and sailors, And
it actually meant something if you supposedly, if you were
a sailor and you wore an ear ring in one ear,
it either meant that you had uh circumnavigated the globe
or you would cross the equator. And sometimes and this
again I don't I don't know how true this is.
(11:01):
But supposedly, if your body washed up on shore or whatever,
and you had a big chunk of golden ear ear,
it was supposed to be used for a proper Christian burial,
And there was a sailor superstition that piercing your ear
would improve eyesight. Well I have shoot, that's not true.
I know I'm wearing contact, so behind. But there are
(11:21):
also some uh, some pretty great historical myths about piercings
involving the Romans. And yes, let's talk about the Romans. Yeah,
there's this this myth, this idea that that Romans pierced
their nipples to signify virility, but that in fact is
(11:42):
not true. And I saw this in a few different sources,
and so we had it in our notes. And then
come to find out this guy named Doug Malloy, who
will talk about more. He's one of the fathers of
modification all that. Yeah, of modern body piercing. Um, this
guy Doug will boy came up with, um, with a
few of these well spread myths about body piercing. I
(12:07):
think is a way to normalize the behavior. But if
someone tells you that, hey, do you know that Julius Caesar,
how does nipples pierced? You can say, uh, did you
know that? That is a total hoax concocted by a
guy in l A in the seventies. Yeah, who really
wanted to get people into his piercing business. But more
on that later. Right, Um, speaking of male piercings, what
(12:31):
about the Gladiators, Caroline, Right, it was not uncommon for
gladiators to have a penis piercing, and we think that
this is true. Yeah, yeah it Uh. It was not
just for show for looks. It was actually to prevent
too much sexual activity, because you know, we've talked about
this in different ways before on the podcast about how
there used to be these ideas of masculinity and virility
(12:54):
that if men were too sexually active or masturbated too much,
they would lose all of their masculine energy. So this
was along those lines and probably kind of a punishment juice.
Gladiators are basically enslaved. Um. But one one penis piercing
myth that we should go ahead and bust. Also thanks
to Doug malloy, Uh, there's the idea that the Prince
(13:17):
Albert piercing, which is a penis piercing uh, was named
after Prince Albert, who supposedly got his penis piers because
at the time Bo Brummel popularized really tight trousers, so
tight in fact, that you might be able to see
a man's bulge in his crotch and so um, in
(13:38):
order to prevent such an insightly bulge from offending the
sensibilities of passers, by the idea was that Prince Albert
got his penis pierced so that he could actually hook
his penis to the side in his uh, in his trousers,
to tame his bulge. But guess what, folks, that uh,
(14:01):
that far fetched tale is indeed too far fetched to
be true. I read that about gladiators too, did you
read that? I read that sometimes gladiators would have a
hook or something like a ring so that they could
tie their penis back with like a leather cord, so
that when they were fighting to the death, you know,
they would avoid injury. Maybe I don't know, maybe there's
a little bit of needs all tight end. Maybe it's
(14:23):
all fake malloy, shake my fist. Um. But speaking of
naughty piercings, Victorian England nineties, right, Apparently nipple piercing was
in vogue for Victorian ladies. I think this was a
brief amount of time because there was a letter written
(14:45):
in a woman's magazine about this whole. It was the
first person essay on get a woman getting her her
nipples piers because supposedly he's Victorian women obviously more upper
class would pierce or nipples and even um, I have
chains that would run between them as a type of
body adornment, and supposedly some doctors at the time encouraged
(15:08):
women to get their nipples pierced to stimulate, um, I
guess engorgement to make breastfeeding easier. But again, some historians
have are are a little skeptical of this notion of
nipple piercing. But again you'll find it in a number
of different quote from this woman. It was in pretty
(15:30):
I google it, and I mean just a million things
came up. Everybody who is pro piercing has quoted this
woman who wrote into this magazine back in the day,
and um, she said that she came to the conclusion
that many ladies are ready to bear the passing pain
for the sake of love. Right because obviously too aside
from the idea of it helping with breastfeeding, nipple piercings
(15:52):
were highly eroticized of the time as well, which also
leeds them to think, you know, modern day slars to think, well,
maybe this is just a little bit of pure fantasy. Yeah,
like letters to hustler or something, right nineties hustlers. But
moving on, um, in the nineteen twenties, pierced ears became
(16:13):
a little bit less popular with the advent of clip
on earrings, right, which I wore when I was a kid,
but they kind of they pinched my ear they do well,
I didn't have any normal looking ones. I just had
dressed up clip on so they were like huge pageant
sequin ear rings. Bring those back, toddlers and tiaras. Uh.
And then in the nineteen sixties, ear piercing becomes extremely
(16:37):
popular among females. But at this point, we're doing it
at home, Yeah, sticking at a heated or sterilized needle
through the ear lobe and another thing that I thought
was completely disgusting, and I'm so I'm gonna share it
with you. Um also available around this time, and we're
apparently popular, and and somebody's going to have to write
(16:58):
in and tell me if this is true. Spring loaded
ring shaped earrings with each end sharpened to a point
that you just put on your ear and slowly squeeze
over a course of days or weeks long, and behold,
eventually your ears pierced. You know, I'm gonna go ahead
and go out of the limb and say I believe that. Yeah,
but I mean, why, Okay, Well, I guess if if
(17:19):
you don't have a sterile needle handy and someone to
jab it through your ear, then maybe. But I had
never heard of that. I wouldn't want to do it,
but I'm a boss, I'll go ahead and say it.
But yeah, if anyone can confirm or deny conclusively the
spring loaded ear ring for us, please let us know.
And then in the I guess in the late nineteen
(17:40):
sixties and nineteen seventies, men began wearing ear rings um
as part of the hippie movement. But then this is
also when gayman started piercing their right ear lobe as
a way to subtly signify their sexuality because they could
not be they were still very closeted and um, you know,
they couldn't dress differently or you know, kind of be
(18:03):
open at all. And so the right earlob piercing became
a subtle way of letting other folks know what's up.
All right, But speaking of the gay community, piercings, not
just ear piercings but body piercings um are really tied
in with the gay s and m community especially. I
got its start in California, right in Los Angeles. We
(18:23):
have Doug malloy, guy who we've mentioned a number of times,
who who came up with all the sort of the
piercing body piercing mythology, and Jim Ward really spearheaded this
body piercing kind of counterculture. And um, Jim Ward in
open up the first professional body piercing specialty studio in
(18:43):
Los Angeles. It was called the Gauntlet and it closed
in and at one point Jim Wards said that it
was an outgrowth of my own sexual exploration and the
things that were erotic, and um, the reason why Doug
malloy and Doug molloy is actually a suit him. I
forget his real name, um, but it was a student
ym that he adopted because he was this wealthy guy
(19:06):
in l A. And he was also gay and I
guess closeted and also in the sen m community. So
Doug malloy was this kind of alter ego that he
adopted and body piercing kind of became a part of
that whole community and then spread thanks to celebrity culture
and especially punk rock slowly seeped into right as soon
(19:28):
as rock stars start doing something, it kind of yeah,
their fans follow suit, and yeah, so in the seventies,
you have a lot of punk guys piercing your own ears.
But at this point, I mean, it's it's definitely becoming
more socially acceptable in general, because you could get it
done at a doctor's office or like you, at a
department store at this point and so, and this is
(19:48):
when the terrifying ear piercing guns come about. Well you
know what though, I mean, if you had given me
the choice between an ear piercing gun and starting a
ring on my ear that I squeezed, I just I
wouldn't take the gun. You'd passed out again on the
floor of Claire's, I would do it all over the lady. Well,
what I didn't realize was that even in the early nineties, piercing,
(20:12):
especially body piercing, was very taboo in American culture. We
found an article from the New York Times talking about
this new fad um and it was actually kind of
quaint reading about how how scandalous it was to have
your your nose or your nipple pierce or I mean,
(20:33):
heaven forbid, your your lip or your eyebrow. These more
visible body piercings. There were stories of what did she
have pierced the woman who got fired. She had her
nose piers and she had a ring in it, not
just a stud, and they were like, well, you can't
take it out or you can leave. Um. But my
favorite story is about the popularization of the belly button piercing,
which really has only been around since three all thanks
(20:58):
to three very tract of women, Christie Turlington, Naomi Campbell,
and Alicia's Silverstone. Right, Alicia Silverston who did not actually
get her belly button pierced in that Aerosmith video. She
had a body double and actually told the piercing guy
on set that she thought it was gross. Yeah, well,
Alicia Silverston got her. Well, the body double gets her
her belly button pierce in the video for Aerosmith's crying,
(21:23):
which is I'm not gonna start singing, so a good
start singing. And then supermodels Turlington and Campbell walked down
a runway that year, both bearing belly button rings, and
I mean the rest is history, right, My friend, I
have a friend who pierced around belly button. Oh yeah,
that was I had. I had friends, you were girls
(21:43):
who would do that. But my mother thought that belly
button rings were just very inappropriate for a young lady.
I mean there it was the fear of God put
in me. If I ever came home with my belly
button pierce nose ring, She's totally cool. Bell button ring.
Harlott moving on to ear spools and plugs, which I'm
(22:07):
gonna need help differentiating between the two. But ear plugs
are a cylindrical piece that fits into a large hole
in your ear, and you know, you can stretch, stretch,
it gets bigger, and you have ear spool, which is
apparently a large cylinder. I say apparently, like apparently people
do this, a large cylinder with a disc or decorative
(22:28):
sheet on the front. It sounds like ear spools are
just fancier ear plugs and UM, and the plugs come
in different sizes called gauges UM and this traces back
to pre Columbian America and UM they were also really
popular among ancient meso American cultures, right. Yeah, archaeologists have
found masks meso American masks that have um stretched ear
(22:53):
holes depicted. So it's clearly it's been gone on a
while and I've been noticed. I noticed these um most
often among guys more so than than women. Yeah. I
remember being in my freshman year philosophy breakout group. In
my creepy t a I had. I just had little, um,
(23:13):
just studs. I didn't I have never had gauged anything
in my ears anyway, just little jade studs. And he like,
I'm sitting kind of in the back of a class
and he just looks at me and he's like, so,
how much big are you going to go? I was like,
these are just these are my aunts. They're just studs.
They're not please stop looking at Did he did he
(23:34):
have your plugs or spools himself? No, but he did
have waist length, curly hair and a goatee yes. And
I hope he's listening right now. But speaking of having
your ears pierced in college, we did have a little
bit of a little bit of a no brainer study
that we found. This is from the University of Florida
(23:56):
from two thousand four, and it was analyzing motivations for
kids in college getting tattoos and body piercings. And we
should differentiate between body piercings and ear rings. A lot
of times, just getting your lobes piers that's not really
considered a body piercing. We're talking more like getting uh,
you know, getting a Maryland on your upper lip or
(24:17):
getting your septum piers or something like that. Yeah, etcetera, etcetera.
So why do they do it, Caroline? Basically, why do
we do anything, and that is to attract people to
either either show that we are part of a certain
type of group of people, or to show that we
are um individuals, or to attract a mate, to be
(24:38):
sexually attractive to someone. So, yeah, that's just one of
those things we do, like we're makeup. And I probably
got my nose piers for all of those reasons. I
would never admit that at the time, you know, but
you know, one of the reasons they cite is um
a traumatic life experience. And I don't know how traumatic
your breakup was, but I mean, you know that's something
that a lot of women go cut their hair after
a breakup. You know, it was pretty it was pretty
(24:59):
huge at the time. Huge, But apparently in the eyes
of some collegiate researchers, my choice of getting my nose
pierced would have also been an indicator of of sexual behavior.
So there's this two thousand seven study that we ran
across over at Discover magazine that likes to highlight kind
(25:21):
of ridiculous studies and correlations that researchers will find. And
with this one, uh, this study of college students, they
found that women with body piercings reported substantially greater frequency
of sexual activity than college students without piercings. But yeah,
the same wasn't true for men. Guys who had piercings
(25:42):
were not significantly having more or less sex than anybody.
So yeah, I don't believe that. I don't know that
I'm going to validate that. I mean, I don't think.
I don't think the correlation can definitely, I don't know.
I mean, are people who pierce random parts of themselves
more open to other experience? Maybe? I don't know. I
mean it's the same. It's the same kind of conclusions
(26:02):
though especially for women that will they'll will draw based
on whether or not they have visible tattoos, like oh
you're that type of girl. That girl. Um, So I
don't know. I take those kind of findings with a
grain of salt. And just one more kind of funny
finding related to body piercings. This is from two thousand
(26:24):
six University of Chicago survey trying to get um a
gauge on the frequency of body piercing in particular and tattoos,
and they concluded that body piercing was more common among women,
and it was associated with a lack of religious affiliation,
extended jail time, previous drinking, and recreational drug use. And
(26:46):
it said local medical complications, including broken teeth, were present
in one third of women with body piercing. The not
body piercing, body piercings and uh and two. So, my goodness,
I had no idea what a loaded nose ring that
one that I was getting. Dear, that's that's almost worse
(27:09):
than just the sex thing. But you know what, what
not everybody is prejudiced against people with piercings. Thank goodness.
There is a gentleman, one particular gentleman in the UK
who married Brazilian born Elaine Davidson, who was covered in
nearly seven thousand piercing, some of which are internal. I
don't even know what that means. I don't know what
(27:30):
it means either, but supposely she she said. She told
the Daily Mail the UK that she has fifteen hundred
internal piercings and she holds I think she's still the
current holder in the Guinness Book of World Records for
the most body piercings. Right, and she says she doesn't
even like being pierced that much, but she's willing to
suffer for her art. She also sleeps on a bed
(27:51):
of nails and has walked on glass. But she got
married in June so to a man with no visible piercings. Yeah,
so congratulations, Elaine. It's just are there proves that there
is someone for everyone? Do not despair listeners, although she
she probably has a rough time flying anywhere. Yeah, she
likes to wear war pin on her face too. Okay,
(28:13):
self expression, body modification, everybody's got a thing. We've been
doing it since the dawn of time. You know. Oh hey,
we got these bodies. We had two legs, two arms ahead. No,
I need to change something. I need to put some
holes exactly what I need? More holes in markings. Um.
But should we end this with a note of caution
(28:34):
about piercing and no, this is not about what people
might assume about your your sexual behavior. You just got
to be careful. If you'd want to get a piercing,
make sure that you are getting it from nicesterile source
because piercing and tattoos. They're often lumped together. Um, but
you can transmit eppetize, BC, HIV, wards, herpes, toxic shock syndrome,
(29:01):
skin tubercules, skin tuberculosis, and even a form of leprosy
from that. Not not to freak people out, Yeah, maybe
maybe go to your doctor's office. Should I not have
gone to the mall? No? The Mayo Clinic offers a
comprehensive list of things to look for, such as, you know,
(29:21):
is the person wearing gloves, is there a new needle,
the same kinds of rigorous steps that you would take
before allowing someone to tattoo you, but just knowing that
you might have allergic reactions if it's coated in nickel.
That's very common. Like we mentioned earlier, there can be
skin infections. Sometimes our bodies just don't like having holes
poked in it. And you should make sure there's a
nice open spot on the floor next to the chair
(29:42):
in case you need to lie down. Yeah. So we've
tossed out a ton of just kind of a grab
bag of information about the history of piercing because it
is so extensive and a lot of of myths as well.
So if anyone, especially with that Victorian the nineties Victorian
Nipple Piers saying if anyone knows anything about that, yeah,
(30:03):
let us know. And so you have pierced, yeah, len
Lso your reactions if you have a body piercing in particular, um,
very curious to know other people's um. Keep it curiated
with that. Yes, yes, don't use any colorful language to
describe where your piercing is. We have stand filters. Mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is email addressed
and we can't wait to hear from you. And in
(30:25):
the meantime, we've got a couple of emails here to share.
I've got an email here from Katrina on our episode
about female Spies. She writes just a comment on the
Spies podcast. Wanted to mention that even if the woman
is a heroine of the show, she has eventually given
a man to complete her In quotes in Alias, it
(30:49):
was Vaughan in in Covert Affairs. First it was a doctor,
and then it was a massad agent and now possibly Aggie.
I don't know who Aggie is, but Aggie is the
cute blind guy. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love
both shows. Though Alias got weird towards the end. I'm
kind of sick of seeing shows with females being strong
(31:11):
and independent always ending up having to have a man
or a boyfriend. In Bones is yet another example of that,
says the fem Nikita. But I mean she and Michael
had tension from the beginning. Hey, I'm not getting I
know it's dangerous. I could talk all day. Um. I
have an email from Stephanie. She says that she is
(31:31):
an English major and she reads romance novels on a
fairly frequent basis. I worship my e reader because I
can read them without being hassled for my reading choices. Yes,
there's some incredibly stupid romance novels, but they are also
a slew of less than fantastic novels in all genres.
I read them because I find the character interaction, particularly
the growth of the heroine, very fascinating. If you know
(31:51):
where to look, They're a whole swath of romance novels
that have intelligent, witty, brave, and strong female characters. Thank
you for bringing up that, Jane Austin the You forgot
to mention Emily Bronte as examples of classical romance novel literature.
I've used this to defend my choice to read other
types of romance li it. It's sad but understandable that
romance novels have garnered the colloquial chick porn term. Thanks Jethany,
(32:14):
and thanks to everyone who has written in. And if
you don't want to write an email but you want
to share your thoughts, you can always head over to
Facebook and say hello, and follow us on Twitter at
Mom's Stuff Podcast, and of course you can check out
the blog during the week. It's stuff Mom Never told
You from how Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to
(32:37):
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
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(32:58):
It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From housetop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And since we're talking about
(00:22):
body piercings today, we decided fair listeners that we would
start off with some personal anecdotes because Caroline and I
both have our ears pierced. Although I never wear earrings anymore,
i'll wear them a lot. I have a kind of
a round face, so I feel like I need to
balance it out sometimes with something shiny next to it.
(00:42):
You wear earrings very well, I just forget about they
might even be closed up by now. I just forget hey,
I mean, I mean, oh, yeah, but I don't know. Well,
I just my mind immediately went to like, oh, you
have to get that repierced. But I guess you don't.
If you don't know, don't Yeah. Um, but let's be
let's back up, because I think for a lot of
(01:04):
women listening, probably and guys too, because I'm sure there
are some some guys out there listening to have their
ears pierced. Getting your ears pierced for the first time.
It's quite a seminal moment, especially if it happens in adolescence,
because I don't know about you, Caroline, but for me, Um,
I'm the youngest in my family and I have I
have two older sisters, and getting the ears pierced at
(01:27):
the age of twelve was this rite of passage. And
I distinctly remember the day I went to get my
ears pierced. I just got simple gold studs. Where did
you go? I went to Merle Norman department store, and
I think that was where my my sisters had gone.
My mom was very insisted on everything being as uniform
(01:48):
as possible for this ear piercing experience. UM. And I
remember going home that night and just staring at myself
in the mirror and I put my I had long hair,
and I pulled my hair up so I could take
a better look at myself with these these bubbles in
my ear lobes, and I thought I was just entrancing.
(02:13):
I remember looking at myself, like in pajamas, with these
simple studs in my ears and being like, well, Christen Gonger,
you are quite vetching. I don't know. I don't know
why I don't know what it was. I was. I
was excited about my my earrings that I wore. Also,
I also got gold studs put in um. When I
(02:34):
was thirteen, my mom took me to the mall and
I just remember thinking like, it's it's time. You know,
I'm gonna go do it. This is happening, my friends
are doing it. I want to do it. I'm I
don't want to be have naked ear lobes forever, but
you know it's going to hurt. Yeah, but you don't
know how much you know. And and for some people
they were like, oh no, no, never problem. I had
(02:55):
never problem. I had a problem. I'll tell you right now.
I had a problem. We went to Claire's. My all
took me to Claires and I hopped right up in
that little ear piercing seat and I'm like, oh my god,
I'm so special. Look like, does he believe at me?
Because I know I'm to get my ears because there
are people like walking back to like picking out their
you know, weird fake plastic jewelry and stuff. Anyway, so
she pulls out this ear piercing gun and I'm like,
(03:18):
oh wait, what is the what do you oh? Okay. Oh,
and then so she draws a little magic marker dots
on my earlibs, which I was like, are these are
you sure they're even? And then like wow, you know,
ear pierced And that really hurt and it was really loud,
and I'm kind of a nervous Nancy, and so she
did she did the both ears, and then I started
to pass out. She's like, all right, all right, get
(03:39):
down on the floor. Get down on the floor. And
so she had me lie down on the floor and
like put my knees up and kind of rock them
back and forth. So here I am, at thirteen years old,
obviously very confident, you know, non troubled age for kids,
lying in the middle of Claire's being like, you know,
why does a sheet at least your ear piercing and
(04:00):
send you off into a bizarre spiral of every narcissism um.
But that's not I don't know if you know this
or not, Caroline, But since we are talking about piercings,
I also when I was eighteen years old, as a
freshman in college and this was post breakup, I got
my nose pierced. I remember, I remember you had a
(04:21):
piercing Yeah, I probably had one when when we met.
And I still remember when I went home for the
first time and my mom saw my I just had
a stud in my nose, and my mom was just
so sweet and she goes, she paused for a minute
and looked at it and goes nods her head slowly. Cool.
(04:45):
That's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. No, Mama, Conger, you
didn't freak out. Well, see, it's interesting that that you
said that you had it done after a breakup, because
I feel like a lot of the stuff we read
about the psychology of piercing, I mean there's a lot
of eeries and a lot of reasons, and you know,
everybody's different, everybody. I did it just because I was
like it's time. But I mean a lot of people
(05:08):
have piercing reasons, like specific motivations, and a lot of
them are something traumatic happened, or they want to they
want to remember something they went through. Yeah, the nose
piercing was definitely a way for me to I don't know,
I felt like it was some kind of um symbol
of my individualism, you know, of being I'm gonna go
(05:31):
I'm gonna do this. You had to go to a
tattoo parlor downtown. I just I don't know. I felt very,
very edgy getting it done because it up until then,
you know, breaking out of my prim and proper gold
studded chill. And by the way, for listeners out there,
I don't. I don't wear my nose piercing anymore, but
I liked it for a long time. So enough about us.
(05:54):
I mean, we could talk about ourselves forever, but we're
here for um. But before we get into the history
of ear piercing and body piercing, because my goodness is
it quite a rich one, let's toss out some statistics
for who has their ears pierced. And this is coming
from the CBC in Canada and Health Canada reported that
(06:16):
between of us women have their ears pierced, but a
lot of us also experience complications from piercing, which we'll
talk about later, Infections and whatnot. Yeah, I read that
you you're actually quite likely to get an infection if
you get your cartilage pierced on your ear because the
(06:36):
blood flow is not significant enough to heal HeLa wound.
So you've got to be really careful about keeping that
stuff clean, and especially if you wear the nickel plated
jewelry lotical of allergies. But we'll get into that a
little bit later. Why don't why don't we kick things
off with a reading from the Bible, please, Kristen, Okay,
(06:58):
this is coming from Genesis. This is the I believe
the n I V. Version for the Bible scholars out there.
I asked her, whose daughter are you? She said, the
daughter of Bethuel's son of Nahor, who Micah bore to him.
Then I put the ring in her nose and the
bracelets on her arm, and that her in there is Rebecca,
(07:24):
wife of Abraham. Yeah, there's a lot of uh jewelry
speak in the Bible. Um. Hebrews war earrings as adornment,
and gold earrings represented wealth, which makes sense. But actually
they they pierced slave's ears too, as a mark of servitude,
and piercing ears goes back at least six thousand years
(07:44):
in the Middle East, but it probably even predates that. Um.
For instance, when I believe it was Uh, they found
Ozsi the iceman, who at the time was like the
oldest um like person ever found well preserved um, and
(08:05):
he not only had markings on him that appeared to
be some kind of primitive tattoo, but also stretched ear lobes. Right,
he was cool. Yeah, they thought that maybe he even
had his ear um ears pierced as well. And it's
one of the most common types of body modification and
also cross cultural right all over the world around history.
(08:27):
In a lot of tribes all around the world, ear
rings and and another jewelry served to display wealth in
cultures that carried their wealth in jewelry um tribes like
the Fulani of West Africa, the Toureg of the Sahara,
and the Bedouins of the Sinai Peninsula. And in a
lot of tribes, the type of earring that you wore mattered.
It could indicate rank. Among many Northwest Coast Northwest American
(08:50):
Coast Indians such as you know there're some in Alaska, um,
the number of holes in one's ear showed the amount
of wealth because the process was expensive. So if you
have whole your whole ear pierced, it meant, oh yeah,
I'm a pretty rich guy. And um. Nose piercings are
also very common and piercing the septum in particular, that
(09:11):
that piece of flesh between your nostrils is probably the
second most common piercing among indigenous peoples, and they're especially
common among warrior tribes and they'll put like they'll pierce
it with pieces of bone or even gold. Um. And
of course piercing is also very common in India, and
Hindu people will pierce a girl's ears and nose twelve
(09:33):
days after birth when she has given her name and um.
It's also a tradition among um some Indian groups too.
I believe you get your nose pierced the day before
I guess if it isn't already the day before your wedding, right,
And there is a tribe in Brazil that used to
pierce boys and girls ears at birth, just you know,
right out of the gate and immediately inserted wooden plug
(09:54):
that would be exchanged as the holes got bigger. So
it's interesting that so many tribes all over the world
have different forms not only of body modification, but of
um kind of steps to take. Because there's that what
what is the tribe that uses the neck rings. I can't,
I don't know off the top of my head, but
that's another one that you know, like as they get older,
they wear more rings or wear bigger ear plugs. To
(10:17):
signify something in particular, it doesn't make themselves seem more beautiful. Yeah, definitely.
Seems like one one common strand among all of these
different piercing practices is um is that idea of rank
and also the right of passage. And I was surprised
to learn that um ear rings were even common among
men in Elizabethan, England. Um Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, and
(10:40):
Francis Drake all wore gold rings in their ears. You
know who else did? Who pirates indeed, and sailors, And
it actually meant something if you supposedly, if you were
a sailor and you wore an ear ring in one ear,
it either meant that you had uh circumnavigated the globe
or you would cross the equator. And sometimes and this
again I don't I don't know how true this is.
(11:01):
But supposedly, if your body washed up on shore or whatever,
and you had a big chunk of golden ear ear,
it was supposed to be used for a proper Christian burial,
And there was a sailor superstition that piercing your ear
would improve eyesight. Well I have shoot, that's not true.
I know I'm wearing contact, so behind. But there are
(11:21):
also some uh, some pretty great historical myths about piercings
involving the Romans. And yes, let's talk about the Romans. Yeah,
there's this this myth, this idea that that Romans pierced
their nipples to signify virility, but that in fact is
(11:42):
not true. And I saw this in a few different sources,
and so we had it in our notes. And then
come to find out this guy named Doug Malloy, who
will talk about more. He's one of the fathers of
modification all that. Yeah, of modern body piercing. Um, this
guy Doug will boy came up with, um, with a
few of these well spread myths about body piercing. I
(12:07):
think is a way to normalize the behavior. But if
someone tells you that, hey, do you know that Julius Caesar,
how does nipples pierced? You can say, uh, did you
know that? That is a total hoax concocted by a
guy in l A in the seventies. Yeah, who really
wanted to get people into his piercing business. But more
on that later. Right, Um, speaking of male piercings, what
(12:31):
about the Gladiators, Caroline, Right, it was not uncommon for
gladiators to have a penis piercing, and we think that
this is true. Yeah, yeah it Uh. It was not
just for show for looks. It was actually to prevent
too much sexual activity, because you know, we've talked about
this in different ways before on the podcast about how
there used to be these ideas of masculinity and virility
(12:54):
that if men were too sexually active or masturbated too much,
they would lose all of their masculine energy. So this
was along those lines and probably kind of a punishment juice.
Gladiators are basically enslaved. Um. But one one penis piercing
myth that we should go ahead and bust. Also thanks
to Doug malloy, Uh, there's the idea that the Prince
(13:17):
Albert piercing, which is a penis piercing uh, was named
after Prince Albert, who supposedly got his penis piers because
at the time Bo Brummel popularized really tight trousers, so
tight in fact, that you might be able to see
a man's bulge in his crotch and so um, in
(13:38):
order to prevent such an insightly bulge from offending the
sensibilities of passers, by the idea was that Prince Albert
got his penis pierced so that he could actually hook
his penis to the side in his uh, in his trousers,
to tame his bulge. But guess what, folks, that uh,
(14:01):
that far fetched tale is indeed too far fetched to
be true. I read that about gladiators too, did you
read that? I read that sometimes gladiators would have a
hook or something like a ring so that they could
tie their penis back with like a leather cord, so
that when they were fighting to the death, you know,
they would avoid injury. Maybe I don't know, maybe there's
a little bit of needs all tight end. Maybe it's
(14:23):
all fake malloy, shake my fist. Um. But speaking of
naughty piercings, Victorian England nineties, right, Apparently nipple piercing was
in vogue for Victorian ladies. I think this was a
brief amount of time because there was a letter written
(14:45):
in a woman's magazine about this whole. It was the
first person essay on get a woman getting her her
nipples piers because supposedly he's Victorian women obviously more upper
class would pierce or nipples and even um, I have
chains that would run between them as a type of
body adornment, and supposedly some doctors at the time encouraged
(15:08):
women to get their nipples pierced to stimulate, um, I
guess engorgement to make breastfeeding easier. But again, some historians
have are are a little skeptical of this notion of
nipple piercing. But again you'll find it in a number
of different quote from this woman. It was in pretty
(15:30):
I google it, and I mean just a million things
came up. Everybody who is pro piercing has quoted this
woman who wrote into this magazine back in the day,
and um, she said that she came to the conclusion
that many ladies are ready to bear the passing pain
for the sake of love. Right because obviously too aside
from the idea of it helping with breastfeeding, nipple piercings
(15:52):
were highly eroticized of the time as well, which also
leeds them to think, you know, modern day slars to think, well,
maybe this is just a little bit of pure fantasy. Yeah,
like letters to hustler or something, right nineties hustlers. But
moving on, um, in the nineteen twenties, pierced ears became
(16:13):
a little bit less popular with the advent of clip
on earrings, right, which I wore when I was a kid,
but they kind of they pinched my ear they do well,
I didn't have any normal looking ones. I just had
dressed up clip on so they were like huge pageant
sequin ear rings. Bring those back, toddlers and tiaras. Uh.
And then in the nineteen sixties, ear piercing becomes extremely
(16:37):
popular among females. But at this point, we're doing it
at home, Yeah, sticking at a heated or sterilized needle
through the ear lobe and another thing that I thought
was completely disgusting, and I'm so I'm gonna share it
with you. Um also available around this time, and we're
apparently popular, and and somebody's going to have to write
(16:58):
in and tell me if this is true. Spring loaded
ring shaped earrings with each end sharpened to a point
that you just put on your ear and slowly squeeze
over a course of days or weeks long, and behold,
eventually your ears pierced. You know, I'm gonna go ahead
and go out of the limb and say I believe that. Yeah,
but I mean, why, Okay, Well, I guess if if
(17:19):
you don't have a sterile needle handy and someone to
jab it through your ear, then maybe. But I had
never heard of that. I wouldn't want to do it,
but I'm a boss, I'll go ahead and say it.
But yeah, if anyone can confirm or deny conclusively the
spring loaded ear ring for us, please let us know.
And then in the I guess in the late nineteen
(17:40):
sixties and nineteen seventies, men began wearing ear rings um
as part of the hippie movement. But then this is
also when gayman started piercing their right ear lobe as
a way to subtly signify their sexuality because they could
not be they were still very closeted and um, you know,
they couldn't dress differently or you know, kind of be
(18:03):
open at all. And so the right earlob piercing became
a subtle way of letting other folks know what's up.
All right, But speaking of the gay community, piercings, not
just ear piercings but body piercings um are really tied
in with the gay s and m community especially. I
got its start in California, right in Los Angeles. We
(18:23):
have Doug malloy, guy who we've mentioned a number of times,
who who came up with all the sort of the
piercing body piercing mythology, and Jim Ward really spearheaded this
body piercing kind of counterculture. And um, Jim Ward in
open up the first professional body piercing specialty studio in
(18:43):
Los Angeles. It was called the Gauntlet and it closed
in and at one point Jim Wards said that it
was an outgrowth of my own sexual exploration and the
things that were erotic, and um, the reason why Doug
malloy and Doug molloy is actually a suit him. I
forget his real name, um, but it was a student
ym that he adopted because he was this wealthy guy
(19:06):
in l A. And he was also gay and I
guess closeted and also in the sen m community. So
Doug malloy was this kind of alter ego that he
adopted and body piercing kind of became a part of
that whole community and then spread thanks to celebrity culture
and especially punk rock slowly seeped into right as soon
(19:28):
as rock stars start doing something, it kind of yeah,
their fans follow suit, and yeah, so in the seventies,
you have a lot of punk guys piercing your own ears.
But at this point, I mean, it's it's definitely becoming
more socially acceptable in general, because you could get it
done at a doctor's office or like you, at a
department store at this point and so, and this is
(19:48):
when the terrifying ear piercing guns come about. Well you
know what though, I mean, if you had given me
the choice between an ear piercing gun and starting a
ring on my ear that I squeezed, I just I
wouldn't take the gun. You'd passed out again on the
floor of Claire's, I would do it all over the lady. Well,
what I didn't realize was that even in the early nineties, piercing,
(20:12):
especially body piercing, was very taboo in American culture. We
found an article from the New York Times talking about
this new fad um and it was actually kind of
quaint reading about how how scandalous it was to have
your your nose or your nipple pierce or I mean,
(20:33):
heaven forbid, your your lip or your eyebrow. These more
visible body piercings. There were stories of what did she
have pierced the woman who got fired. She had her
nose piers and she had a ring in it, not
just a stud, and they were like, well, you can't
take it out or you can leave. Um. But my
favorite story is about the popularization of the belly button piercing,
which really has only been around since three all thanks
(20:58):
to three very tract of women, Christie Turlington, Naomi Campbell,
and Alicia's Silverstone. Right, Alicia Silverston who did not actually
get her belly button pierced in that Aerosmith video. She
had a body double and actually told the piercing guy
on set that she thought it was gross. Yeah, well,
Alicia Silverston got her. Well, the body double gets her
her belly button pierce in the video for Aerosmith's crying,
(21:23):
which is I'm not gonna start singing, so a good
start singing. And then supermodels Turlington and Campbell walked down
a runway that year, both bearing belly button rings, and
I mean the rest is history, right, My friend, I
have a friend who pierced around belly button. Oh yeah,
that was I had. I had friends, you were girls
(21:43):
who would do that. But my mother thought that belly
button rings were just very inappropriate for a young lady.
I mean there it was the fear of God put
in me. If I ever came home with my belly
button pierce nose ring, She's totally cool. Bell button ring.
Harlott moving on to ear spools and plugs, which I'm
(22:07):
gonna need help differentiating between the two. But ear plugs
are a cylindrical piece that fits into a large hole
in your ear, and you know, you can stretch, stretch,
it gets bigger, and you have ear spool, which is
apparently a large cylinder. I say apparently, like apparently people
do this, a large cylinder with a disc or decorative
(22:28):
sheet on the front. It sounds like ear spools are
just fancier ear plugs and UM, and the plugs come
in different sizes called gauges UM and this traces back
to pre Columbian America and UM they were also really
popular among ancient meso American cultures, right. Yeah, archaeologists have
found masks meso American masks that have um stretched ear
(22:53):
holes depicted. So it's clearly it's been gone on a
while and I've been noticed. I noticed these um most
often among guys more so than than women. Yeah. I
remember being in my freshman year philosophy breakout group. In
my creepy t a I had. I just had little, um,
(23:13):
just studs. I didn't I have never had gauged anything
in my ears anyway, just little jade studs. And he like,
I'm sitting kind of in the back of a class
and he just looks at me and he's like, so,
how much big are you going to go? I was like,
these are just these are my aunts. They're just studs.
They're not please stop looking at Did he did he
(23:34):
have your plugs or spools himself? No, but he did
have waist length, curly hair and a goatee yes. And
I hope he's listening right now. But speaking of having
your ears pierced in college, we did have a little
bit of a little bit of a no brainer study
that we found. This is from the University of Florida
(23:56):
from two thousand four, and it was analyzing motivations for
kids in college getting tattoos and body piercings. And we
should differentiate between body piercings and ear rings. A lot
of times, just getting your lobes piers that's not really
considered a body piercing. We're talking more like getting uh,
you know, getting a Maryland on your upper lip or
(24:17):
getting your septum piers or something like that. Yeah, etcetera, etcetera.
So why do they do it, Caroline? Basically, why do
we do anything, and that is to attract people to
either either show that we are part of a certain
type of group of people, or to show that we
are um individuals, or to attract a mate, to be
(24:38):
sexually attractive to someone. So, yeah, that's just one of
those things we do, like we're makeup. And I probably
got my nose piers for all of those reasons. I
would never admit that at the time, you know, but
you know, one of the reasons they cite is um
a traumatic life experience. And I don't know how traumatic
your breakup was, but I mean, you know that's something
that a lot of women go cut their hair after
a breakup. You know, it was pretty it was pretty
(24:59):
huge at the time. Huge, But apparently in the eyes
of some collegiate researchers, my choice of getting my nose
pierced would have also been an indicator of of sexual behavior.
So there's this two thousand seven study that we ran
across over at Discover magazine that likes to highlight kind
(25:21):
of ridiculous studies and correlations that researchers will find. And
with this one, uh, this study of college students, they
found that women with body piercings reported substantially greater frequency
of sexual activity than college students without piercings. But yeah,
the same wasn't true for men. Guys who had piercings
(25:42):
were not significantly having more or less sex than anybody.
So yeah, I don't believe that. I don't know that
I'm going to validate that. I mean, I don't think.
I don't think the correlation can definitely, I don't know.
I mean, are people who pierce random parts of themselves
more open to other experience? Maybe? I don't know. I
mean it's the same. It's the same kind of conclusions
(26:02):
though especially for women that will they'll will draw based
on whether or not they have visible tattoos, like oh
you're that type of girl. That girl. Um, So I
don't know. I take those kind of findings with a
grain of salt. And just one more kind of funny
finding related to body piercings. This is from two thousand
(26:24):
six University of Chicago survey trying to get um a
gauge on the frequency of body piercing in particular and tattoos,
and they concluded that body piercing was more common among women,
and it was associated with a lack of religious affiliation,
extended jail time, previous drinking, and recreational drug use. And
(26:46):
it said local medical complications, including broken teeth, were present
in one third of women with body piercing. The not
body piercing, body piercings and uh and two. So, my goodness,
I had no idea what a loaded nose ring that
one that I was getting. Dear, that's that's almost worse
(27:09):
than just the sex thing. But you know what, what
not everybody is prejudiced against people with piercings. Thank goodness.
There is a gentleman, one particular gentleman in the UK
who married Brazilian born Elaine Davidson, who was covered in
nearly seven thousand piercing, some of which are internal. I
don't even know what that means. I don't know what
(27:30):
it means either, but supposely she she said. She told
the Daily Mail the UK that she has fifteen hundred
internal piercings and she holds I think she's still the
current holder in the Guinness Book of World Records for
the most body piercings. Right, and she says she doesn't
even like being pierced that much, but she's willing to
suffer for her art. She also sleeps on a bed
(27:51):
of nails and has walked on glass. But she got
married in June so to a man with no visible piercings. Yeah,
so congratulations, Elaine. It's just are there proves that there
is someone for everyone? Do not despair listeners, although she
she probably has a rough time flying anywhere. Yeah, she
likes to wear war pin on her face too. Okay,
(28:13):
self expression, body modification, everybody's got a thing. We've been
doing it since the dawn of time. You know. Oh hey,
we got these bodies. We had two legs, two arms ahead. No,
I need to change something. I need to put some
holes exactly what I need? More holes in markings. Um.
But should we end this with a note of caution
(28:34):
about piercing and no, this is not about what people
might assume about your your sexual behavior. You just got
to be careful. If you'd want to get a piercing,
make sure that you are getting it from nicesterile source
because piercing and tattoos. They're often lumped together. Um, but
you can transmit eppetize, BC, HIV, wards, herpes, toxic shock syndrome,
(29:01):
skin tubercules, skin tuberculosis, and even a form of leprosy
from that. Not not to freak people out, Yeah, maybe
maybe go to your doctor's office. Should I not have
gone to the mall? No? The Mayo Clinic offers a
comprehensive list of things to look for, such as, you know,
(29:21):
is the person wearing gloves, is there a new needle,
the same kinds of rigorous steps that you would take
before allowing someone to tattoo you, but just knowing that
you might have allergic reactions if it's coated in nickel.
That's very common. Like we mentioned earlier, there can be
skin infections. Sometimes our bodies just don't like having holes
poked in it. And you should make sure there's a
nice open spot on the floor next to the chair
(29:42):
in case you need to lie down. Yeah. So we've
tossed out a ton of just kind of a grab
bag of information about the history of piercing because it
is so extensive and a lot of of myths as well.
So if anyone, especially with that Victorian the nineties Victorian
Nipple Piers saying if anyone knows anything about that, yeah,
(30:03):
let us know. And so you have pierced, yeah, len
Lso your reactions if you have a body piercing in particular, um,
very curious to know other people's um. Keep it curiated
with that. Yes, yes, don't use any colorful language to
describe where your piercing is. We have stand filters. Mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is email addressed
and we can't wait to hear from you. And in
(30:25):
the meantime, we've got a couple of emails here to share.
I've got an email here from Katrina on our episode
about female Spies. She writes just a comment on the
Spies podcast. Wanted to mention that even if the woman
is a heroine of the show, she has eventually given
a man to complete her In quotes in Alias, it
(30:49):
was Vaughan in in Covert Affairs. First it was a doctor,
and then it was a massad agent and now possibly Aggie.
I don't know who Aggie is, but Aggie is the
cute blind guy. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love
both shows. Though Alias got weird towards the end. I'm
kind of sick of seeing shows with females being strong
(31:11):
and independent always ending up having to have a man
or a boyfriend. In Bones is yet another example of that,
says the fem Nikita. But I mean she and Michael
had tension from the beginning. Hey, I'm not getting I
know it's dangerous. I could talk all day. Um. I
have an email from Stephanie. She says that she is
(31:31):
an English major and she reads romance novels on a
fairly frequent basis. I worship my e reader because I
can read them without being hassled for my reading choices. Yes,
there's some incredibly stupid romance novels, but they are also
a slew of less than fantastic novels in all genres.
I read them because I find the character interaction, particularly
the growth of the heroine, very fascinating. If you know
(31:51):
where to look, They're a whole swath of romance novels
that have intelligent, witty, brave, and strong female characters. Thank
you for bringing up that, Jane Austin the You forgot
to mention Emily Bronte as examples of classical romance novel literature.
I've used this to defend my choice to read other
types of romance li it. It's sad but understandable that
romance novels have garnered the colloquial chick porn term. Thanks Jethany,
(32:14):
and thanks to everyone who has written in. And if
you don't want to write an email but you want
to share your thoughts, you can always head over to
Facebook and say hello, and follow us on Twitter at
Mom's Stuff Podcast, and of course you can check out
the blog during the week. It's stuff Mom Never told
You from how Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to
(32:37):
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The house Stuff Works
iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes,
brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
(32:58):
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