YORK!
I've been getting PM's like crazy from women slighter older than I am, telling me to get it pierced if I want. Too bad we don't all live near one another--we could go together and have a very ritualistic Atkins victory piercing session.
As far as viewing piercing as mutilation; I don't. I know that some do, but I've always viewed the body as a blank canvas; it's an individual medium for expression. Body piercing isn't new, either. Its practice has been around since ancient times in many tribes throughout the world.
Newbirth, you had asked what a tragus piercing is. If you try to plug your ears without sticking your finger in the ear canal, most people press the little flap of cartilage on the front of the ear to seal the ear. That flap of thicker cartilage is called the tragus. It's considered a facial piercing, though it really occurs at the front of the ear. Typically the gauge of the earring post has to an 18 or 16 for the hole to stay open. It takes about 18 months to heal. Most people wear a silver hoop with a colored ball in the piercing, but I have an 18 gauge straight 14k post with a little diamond cut gold ball on the end. It's the only major piercing I've retained since my wilder college days. I've had it for about five years now--and it's taketn my mother about half that long to stop bugging me about taking it out! The moment of reckoning came when I was a bridesmaid in my brother's wedding and had my hair styled in an intricate up-sweep. You could see the earring, but I made sure I had the little gold ball in place instead of a metal hoop. My mom thought it looked cute and then said, "It's such a part of you now, I think I would miss it if you took it out." My grandma thinks it's cool and I took her--at 76--to get second holes in her lobes! She loves them!
I was planning on taking it out for my wedding next summer, but one night my fiance was toying with it and said, "How long are you going to keep this in?" and I told him probably until the wedding. He tucked my hair behind my ear and said, "I think you should keep it in. It looks pretty and is so...I don't know. So AMORY."
My place of work really didn't say anything, even though I teach in an extremely conservative district. My vice principal once stopped me near the end of my first year teaching and said, "Did that hurt?" That was where the conversation ended. My students get a kick out of it when they see it, though a tragus piercing is pretty tame compared with some of the septum rings and tattoos the parents of my ninth graders condone. Now THAT bugs me. Letting a fourteen-year-old get a Good Charlotte tattoo in the middle of his chest is a bit much.
So there's the tragus piercing saga.
Linear Mode
