A rchive Date
[ 16-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
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[Do not staple, pierce or mutilate
By Toronto Sun
May 16, 2000
Try as I might, I can't fathom this generation's need to pierce.
I know this isn't the first generation to stick holes in itself. I realize it's a fashion statement as old as make-up. Certainly, primitive tribes used to do it all the time. The Romans, I'm told, at the height of their civilization, liked a little piercing.
Still, I don't get it.
As far as I can tell, there is no part of the body which is not pierceable and which, somewhere, on someone, has not had a hole poked in it and a piece of jewelry hung from it. I think the piercees prefer parts without bones in them, but I don't think that's absolutely necessary.
Piercing of the nose, to my mind, is the worst. No, second worst. Well, maybe third, but it's right up there with the worst. You start thinking about it, there are some pretty awful places a person could find themselves pierced. But a pierced nose is genuinely dreadful.
To me it looks like what might happen to you if you fell asleep after a particularly raucous stag and your friends, in their drunken state, thought a big, old metal stud sticking out the side of your nose would be a good joke.
Think of the things you can't do with a piece of jewelry on the side of your nose, fastened with a clasp inside said nose. (I think that's how they do it.) First, you can't blow your nose with any certainty that you'll accomplish efficiently what nose blowing is designed to do, namely clear the nasal passages. You can't just rear back with a clean, crisp hankie in hand and give out with a world-class honk, can you? Not with any dignity, you can't. It's even gross talking about it.
Faced with a person sporting a ring in his or her nose, I find myself involuntarily picturing said person taking a big blow. It's an awful mess. Like the attack of the killer slime balls. I can't help it. It's the image that leaps to mind the minute I spy a nose ring. If it's attached to the guy who's serving me my dinner, I'm in big trouble.
Which brings me to the second thing you can't do if you have your nose pierced. You can't have dinner with me. I don't care how fastidious you are, you still look to me like a person with a nose ring who just recently tried to blow his nose. Or sneezed, for heaven's sake. I don't want to think about it.
The ear, even encircled top to bottom with diamond studs, however cauliflowered it makes one look, is at least hygienic.
The belly button ring has always baffled me. I see at least half the beautiful young SUNshine Girls these days have had their belly buttons pierced. I wonder what has become of modern medicine that so many youngsters have what we used to call, in my day, outies.
Perhaps mothers are requesting outies for their daughters to facilitate navel piercing when the children grow up. Innies, we used to think, were quite attractive, essential, even, for young girls who wished to grow up into bikini models. Unfortunately, they render navel piercing an asymmetrical affair.
I think the motivation for women to pierce their bodies is, indeed, fashion and beauty. They're under the impression a pearl stud through the tongue makes them more attractive. In fact, it makes them look like a talking oyster doing an impression of Elmer Fudd.
Men, I'd guess, mostly want to show how tough they are. You see a guy with 10 or 12 little rings in his eyebrow, you know this is one macho dude. I mean, you can tell it hurt something awful to get that done. You don't want to mess with a guy who has a Harley-Davidson emblem hanging from his lower lip.
The really tough guys, though, get metal pegs the size of golf tees stuck through their nipples. Take hold of your nipple sometime and give it a little pinch. You'll have some idea of what these guys go through. We're talking tough here, not smart.
I'm told there's a sexual dimension to piercing, too.
Drilling little holes in one's sexual apparatus from which to suspend things is all the rage in some circles. I saw it on the Internet; actual close-up pictures of men and women with objects, which make absolutely no sense whatsoever, attached down there.
I don't get that, either.
Steward appears Tuesdays and Sundays. E-mail: hartleysteward@canoemail.com ]
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