Piercing: not just for ears

Some people may not consider pieces of metal inserted into holes in the body beautiful – but Maure Smith does.

Smith, president of USU’s Graduate Student Senate, has three earrings and a small silver stud in her nose.

“I do think it’s beautiful,” she said, “but I didn’t necessarily start out that way. I started by wanting to differentiate myself from other people.”

Nate Burch, owner of Beyond Piercing Studio, said when he first started piercing at 18 he

felt like people needed a reason to get a piercing, but now he likes piercings because they highlight parts of people’s bodies.

“I like piercing because I think it attracts attention to a part of your body that you like,” Burch said. “People come in and say, ‘I hate my nose. I want

to pierce it.’ It’s something sparkly on your face and it attracts the eye; you should get it someplace you like.”

While he said people often don’t have a very specific reason for getting a piercing, piercings can become a timeline for what is happening in a person’s life.

“You’ll always remember that point in your life when you come in. You’ll always have a remnant of that time,” he said. “I remember every epic event in my life revolved around a piercing.”

Smith said while she now thinks her piercings are also about aesthetics, they still hold for her the original purpose of differentiating herself from people around her.

While he gets the occasional rebellious 18-year-old, Burch said the majority of his clientele is Logan’s working class just looking for something to accent their bodies.

His advice for people considering piercing: “Just get it because you want it. It’s not plastic surgery; it won’t change the way you look.”

Burch said trends happen in piercing just like with any other industry, and people should make sure they want the piercing they get.

“The trends revolve more or less around some mainstream movement, like Christina Aguilera getting her nose pierced. We had a whole bunch of nose piercings after that,” Burch said.

Styles like gauging – stretching the pierced hole to make it larger – have become popular because people are looking for a way to do something different with their bodies, he said. Burch said people are tired of the single hoop and get the opportunity to wear different jewelry and accessories with different piercing styles like gauging.

Burch said one of the things people need to realize when getting a piercing that is not the Utah standard of one hole in each ear is that there is a stigma against body modification.

“This is the life I choose. People need to be prepared to accept the responsibility,” he said. “You’re basically looking people right in the eye and saying, ‘Look at me.’ A piercing is the first thing your eye will go to.”

Burch said he made the choice to live in a conservative place but appreciates the support of Logan’s Health Department. He said they redid the health code to take in the opinions of tattoo artists and piercers. “It’s nice to have a health department that isn’t opposed to anything just because it’s different,” he said.

Smith said people do get judged if they have a piercing. “I’m not saying it’s right that others judge, but you need to consider the consequences and decide if it’s worthwhile. People will make assumptions. They may be true; they may not be.”

She said someone getting a piercing needs to think about what will happen. Smith said she and her mother had a big fight after she got her nose pierced, and it wasn’t something she had realized would happen. Even with that, Smith said she likes her piercings.

“Getting my nose pierced was one of the best things I ever did,” she said. “I felt liberated and in control. It was something I wanted to say about myself.”

-dilewis@cc.usu.edu