Ears generally and having loads of ear piercings is now a thing. It’s been a thing for a while – I knew it was when Becky B turned up with an extra piercing in her ear last year. I thought she was being weird, that she’d just gone mad after having baby no.2 – but in fact she was just fashionably previous, as usual.
As with so many fashion things I dismissed jumping on board thinking “I can’t do it, it’s just so craven of me, so try-hard. And it will be over any minute now.” But it’s not over – and I did want one. I quite like the odd tasteful extra piercing and I’ve got a tattoo, although tattoos are rarely tasteful (except my friend Alice who has a little bow on the inside of her wrist, which she carries off very dashingly).
My dad always says that my habit of tattooing and piercing myself is an example of my proletariat roots asserting themselves – but he is just envious that I am so posh these days that I can behave like a complete chavver without caring.
Anyway so one day last week when Sam was finally back at nursery after his multiple illnesses – poor little mite – I went into Claire’s Accessories, on my own, at 10.05 in the morning and got an extra piercing. It barely hurt, was a bit sore for an hour afterwards and it’s like I’ve had it forever. I love it – it makes me say something that I never have before: “I really want a third.”
Oh my goodness – this is coming back??? I had 3 piercings in my left ear when I was a teenager. Don’t tell me I now need to get the extra two opened up again in order not to look like an ancient mother to 2 uni students. Oh wait………. I am ancient…….. and I do have 2 sons at uni………..
I remember being at the hairdresser’s and she did not have enough cash in the till for my change (this was back in the pre-credit card era, when the dinosaures roamed the ….eh…streets?) so I told her to give me an extra piercing in my right ear. Waaaaay before this was even vaguely fashionable here in Norway. Had this notion I would get a sapphire for that ,but the darn bloody hole hurt like hell,kept filling up w puss and yucky stuff and I never could afford a sapphire anyway so after a year or so I just let it close up. Still got a hard little lump there,though, some 40 years later….
Third…baby..??? Eeek, excited already!!
No, dear, a third piercing
Oh man, piercings. I love them to a fault. As a part time goth/metalhead I got both my earlobes pierced three times when I started university five years ago. I thought it was really alt and dangerous (and it was then) untill I read somewhere that it was becoming a THING that high fashion people are doing. I really have no idea why it pissed me off so much at the time (I probably thought they were STEALING my “original” idea) So I stomped down to my local body piercer determined to BEAT them all. It resulted in a current grand total of 17 ear/body piercings… Makes airport security GREAT fun, I tell you. But I say now to everyone to just go for it. It hurts but only temporarily, it makes a big impact, and if you decide you don’t want it anymore you just take the jewellery out and the hole closes up. Nowhere near the commitment level of a tattoo. I love em.
But did you get one in each ear?? Or have you gone uber-cool/uber-chav and just had an extra in ONE EAR? Do you remember when there was a ‘gay ear’?? Man the 90s were hard work!!
just one extra in one ear! so chav it hurts
I went to boarding school in North Norfolk and there was nothing to do at weekends expect get drunk on vermouth and pierce our own ears. We just sprayed deodorant on them really close up to ‘freeze’ them and then shoved the earrings through. And not one of us died of blood poisoning.
I had 3 in one ear and 2 in the other and a ‘hippy’ one in the top of my ear that I had done on a Kabutz when I was a university. I’m such a Sloane ranger cliche.
Anyway, until recently I’d been a square and just had a matching single pair of holes. Then I decided to resurrect one of the second ones after seeing a photo of Laura Bailey so I shoved a stud through the closed up one. It only goes red if I put a really cheap and nasty earring in it and I do love it to bits.
It’s caused quite the stir among the Mummy Mafia in the Channel Islands though.
fuck em
Oh no! Now you’re making me think that the extra one i am contemplating on top of one of my ears is a real thing that I could really do…
My second piercing from the late 90s is still operational. I just tried stickin the earring I’m currently wearing through it. A third though? Now I want one really badly. Many moons ago in a dormitory at Wycombe Abbey I did my own top piercing (through the crunchy cartilage but which makes me wince when I think about it) after numbing the critical area with a squirt of Sure deodorant. When my father saw it during exert he said, “if you want to look like a gypo you’re going the right way about it”. Please could you do a post on what kind of earrings to wear in the second hole. I imagine silver sperm/cannabis leaves from Kensington Market are no longer the thing.
a third is verily the ting, Lolly. any earring as long as it’s WEENY. tiny bolt of lightening, minuscule star, little gold bar…
Another ear thing? I thought I was ahead of the game when I got ear jackets before you mentioned them. I just wore one for a while until I got fed up with people looking concerned and asking if I’d lost one. Clearly too old to carry that off…… Anyway, I’m not going in Claire’s again as I was in there yesterday with a 9 year old girl and that’s enough of that for this lifetime…….
Looks great. You should get a little ruby or emerald to wear there.
I know I’m a bit old to be reading your blog but you make me laugh – out loud as well!, just thought I’d tell you, I had my ears pierced twice in the late seventies!!! How cool am I
Too cool matey xxx