Don't you just love it when you find a perfectly executed and detailed account of lobe stretching? Yeah me too... so I thought I'd break the mould and give you my mish-mashed report of my lovely lobes.
At A Glance Author Caroline Contact punkposs101@hotmail.com IAM Momentary_Seizure When A year ago Artist Myself Location Leicester, England. The first and only date I remember is March 30th 2005 – the beginning of my journey. At that point I probably couldn't have been more un-educated. I was in Brighton with my friend, wandering around all the interesting shops and we came across a nice little jewellery shop. I had just since founded a love for stretched lobe piercings and I had just had my tongue web pierced so I thought I'd go and have a look, purely to see if they had any nice jewellery and well, it was something to do on a rainy March day wasn't it? A glowing UV lit corner caught my eye. I went over and gazed at all the gleaming acrylic jewellery and instantly decided that I would stretch my lobes. How difficult could it be?
We continued to wander around and made our way into another jewellery shop. I spoke to the man about initial stretches and what size taper I should buy for my first stretch, thinking that I could easily go to about 3mm in one go. He looked at my ears and asked if they were gunned-lobe sized – I had them pierced when I was 5 with a gun in a place that still only pierces lobes with a gun 11 years later – and he said that first of all I had to get to 1.6mm. I felt disheartened as he told me he had no 1.6mm tapers in stock but I picked up again when I realised I saw an inserting pin at the first shop. We trudged back there and I bought a 1.6mm SSS curved inserting pin and felt a flush of excitement as this was the beginning of something new.
Sitting on the train on the way back to where I was staying, I decided to give it a go. It wouldn't be that difficult, I told myself, it's only a little bigger than my lobe at the moment. I put the smaller end into my first lobe hole and pushed gently. Then it stopped. I felt it tighten and my ear stung a little as I tried to push it further. That's odd, I thought. I felt the back of my ear and only about 2cm of the pin had gone in. I tried the other lobe and again, only a small fraction of the pin came through my ear. I was completely shot-down. There were people with lobes big enough to fit small creatures through and yet I couldn't even get to 1.6mm. I wanted to quit at the first hurdle but I realised that not only would it have been a waste of £3.99, but it'd just be like everything else I didn't do because it was easier to give up just as it gets difficult.
That night I decided it'd be a good idea to try again. I was drinking and I thought that maybe vast amounts of vodka might numb the pain. Turns out I was right and in the morning I woke up with the curved metal in my left earlobe. I was happy and couldn't wait to do it again. By the end of my stay in Brighton I was able to take the pin out and put it back in with ease and for the next few weeks that's all I would do. I'd be passing it through my fingers and pulling on it as I had hoped that it would maybe stretch a little more for my next attempt.
A nice sunny day a few weeks later, my friend and I went into a small, incense-filled building down one of the alleys in our hometown and I bought a cute little rainbow coloured 2.5mm taper. Again, I tried to push it in and again, to little avail. I wriggled around and winced in pain, sitting on concrete steps near a local cathedral, cigarette in hand and a twisted expression on my face. I'm sure I looked comical, to say the least. I continued to wander around with that half in my ear when we went into the aforementioned piercing studio where my friend got pierced. The lady in there had beautiful earlobes, 5/8ths at least. She told me that a lubricant like KY Jelly would be useful to me, as she saw that I was having a little trouble with the taper in my ear already. I thanked her for the advice and then later saw another friend who randomly handed me a 6mm straight acrylic pink taper. I held it in my hand and it looked so huge. At least I had a target, right?
That evening I did probably the first research of stretched lobes and I learnt a lot – God bless BME Encyclopaedia. I decided I wouldn't go any bigger than 8mm, as that's where the elasticity of your ears becomes over worn out and there's a possibility that they wouldn't close up. I thought that it wouldn't bother me, but I just wanted to make sure. I also learnt that lubricants like Vaseline, KY Jelly and oils like vitamin E and emu oil help during stretches. I found some Vaseline and put it over the taper and pushed it into my ear. It pinched and smarted for a few seconds but then it was fine.
I thought I'd be cocky and try and skip a size. That was a big mistake. I tried to go from the 2.5mm taper to one of 4mm. It didn't seem like a big jump and I'd been wearing the smaller one for what seemed like ages. I covered it in Vaseline and pushed. It didn't budge in the slightest. I couldn't see why. I tried for weeks but I just couldn't do it, neither did I want to pay £6 for a tiny piece of plastic when I hoped that will power and force would pay off. Turns out it didn't and a friend of mine got so annoyed with my complaints, she bought me a 3.5mm taper that went in with no resistance. The jump to 4mm was then a breeze and I was content enough with the curved pink and white taper in my lobe.
Around 3 weeks after my stretch to 4mm, I thought I'd go to five. I had the taper and it seemed like a long enough gap between stretches. I can tell you now, probably around a year later, I've never been in as much pain. I wish I knew why it hurt so much. I was sitting using the downstairs computer at about 2 in the morning and I thought that it was a good a time as any. I used plenty of Vaseline and pushed the taper in slowly. All of a sudden, something changed and the taper shot in. I knew that probably wasn't a good thing, especially as my ear felt cold. As soon the thought came to me, the most astonishing pain took my lobe and the left side of my face. As I said, it was 2am so I couldn't exactly scream with pain. Instead I somehow thought that if I clenched my fists and paced about a bit it'd make it better. Needless to say, it didn't. I sat with my ear throbbing for the next half an hour and it looking swollen and pink. Over the next few days it was sore and still swollen. It was crusty and bled slightly yet I still didn't know what I had done to irritate it so much. And to this day, I still don't.
The stretch to 6mm was relatively uneventful. I made sure my lobe was completely calm after the episode with the 5mm taper and it slid in with ease. A few weeks after that I was able to push my 8mm taper in over the course of a few hours. I was impressed with how it looked and it felt like a part of me. A little while later I bought some SSS tunnels and some acrylic plugs and swapped between them every so often.
The right lobe was much less eventful. There were no hitches, no pain, no blood and no 2am pacing - thankfully. I think I managed to stretch it to 8mm in a little over half the time and in an instant I was wearing a pair of beautiful blue glass double flared plugs. They were comfortable, elegant and looked great. I truly felt like I had achieved something. Not only did I have new looking piercings, but it was something I had done for myself. I had put the effort in, I had done the work and I had done it for no one else but me. My confidence had increased and I felt accepted into some sort of lobe-stretching secret society – I'm pretty pathetic, I know. They made me feel unique – there was no one in my year that had them and only one or two out of the other 2000-odd people in my whole school – and for this I was in love with them, unconditionally.
After a good few months of being at 8mm I got the stretching bug. Bad. My plugs had become very loose and I felt it was time for me to move onwards and upwards. I was aware that if I did go any further, I may never have my normal earlobes back again but this didn't faze me. I had been talking to people on IAM and it seemed that 12.5mm/½" would look good. I had also discovered the wonders of electrical tape and vitamin E oil so I began to tape wrap some 8mm Teflon plugs I had been given and massage my lobes with the vitamin E. Considering the amount my lobes had stretched by themselves, I only needed to take them up around 3mm with the tape. I found some beautiful black Kaos in the IAM Jewellery Exchange and bought them for just £5. In about a months time they were in. In the mean time, I had to retire a lobe piercing. I had my stretched lobes and then two other pairs at 16g next to it. With the Kaos having rather substantial flares, I felt the only way to go about it was to retire the piercing closest to the lobe – and if you look closely, you can see the small scar.
I loved that pair of black Kaos. I wore them all the time and they made my lobes look bigger than they actually were and for that, I was grateful. I then accumulated various different bits of jewellery – some white silicone tunnels, glittery acrylic plugs, strawberry faced acrylic plugs and some with a glittery swirl design. All of a sudden my lobes looked small. They had lost their previous sparkle and I decided I was going to stretch them again. I was somewhat disappointed in myself for giving in to my desires so easily but I knew that this project wasn't going to stop yet. I made some plugs solely out of black electrical tape and took them up slowly, not knowing quite where I was going to stop. I had gotten to about 15mm and decided that 5/8ths would be where I'd stop.
I then had a phone call from my mother who was, bizarrely, in a piercing studio and told me she'd seen some plugs she wanted to buy for me, but they were nearer to 17mm. It turns out that they were simply beautiful. They were 16.9mm (apparently – the lady in the shop had measured them at that) and horn and bone with a lovely design on the front and I couldn't wait to wear them. Because I had a goal, my ears decided to be particularly stubborn in getting to the size needed to put them in my lobes. After some careful... well, after some shoving, I managed to get the right one in and then a few days later the left one popped in as well. I loved the weight in my ears, as they were by far the heaviest material I had ever worn and obviously the largest. They moved when I moved and it felt good to still be so feminine even with these great chunks of animal in my ear – I'm glad that everything is done properly because being a vegetarian with pieces of animal bone in my ears takes a little bit of explaining. I had come such a long way in such a short space of time and it's probably been one of the most exciting journeys of my life. And also one that hasn't stopped.
I sit here now, in June 2006 with one of the horn and bone plugs in my ear and an 18mm plug in the other. It is somewhat uncomfortable as the wearing surface is pretty small. My left lobe is a lot thicker and still a lot more stubborn than my right. This is going to be a problem when I come to put the matching 18mm plug in my left ear. The thickness is down to vitamin E massages – I hadn't done as many on my right ear which explains the tissue to be thinner. I think that as I do go further, I will need to give my right lobe the attention it needs to stay thick and healthy. I'm going to miss the horn and bone but I think that going up to 19mm/¾" will be good for me. I fully intended to stop at ½" and yet I always admired and adored lobes that were at 1". Being in the middle will be a true show of character. I'll either stay here, or perhaps even downsize a little so I can wear the horn and bone plugs again or I'll continue my journey onwards up to an inch. Social stigmatism requires people to be normal. Jobs rarely allow for modifications of an irreversible kind and as I'm only 16, going into work with lobes that could carry Pritt Sticks, however useful, would probably not be well accepted. I know that my journey probably hasn't taken as long as it should have and it has definitely had its bumps in the road, especially at the lower stages, but they all made it what it is today. If I had given up when I couldn't push that 1.6mm pin in, nearly a year and a half ago, where would I be now? I see this as a learning curve and one that I'm forever gaining knowledge about. I also hope that people have learnt from mine and their own mistakes. From a just-turned-15-year-old teenager to a fully fledged 16 year old doesn't seem like that much of a gap but I've gained enough awareness to last me a lifetime. And I also know that my journey has only just started...
