Most people use tapers, or Teflon tape to stretch their lobes, but me, I've used some pretty damned weird things.
At A Glance Author elena Contact elena@bme.anon When It just happened It began in December last year, three years after I'd gotten my ears pierced. My mother and I were in a mall in Hong Kong, and this small jewelry shop caught my eye. There was this cute curved barbell thing with little spikes at the ends that I absolutely had to have - except it was 16 ga, whereas my piercing were done at 18 ga.
So when we got back that day, I wiggled my earring a bit in hopes of loosening the piercing a little, and then slowly pushed the new ring in. It hurt just a little, since it was externally threaded and a gauge too large, but it went through easily. This got me wondering more and more about what could fit in my piercing, until one day I chanced upon a packet of some 14ga translucent sticks and a 10ga retainer with O rings at the ends. They looked huge to me at that time, but I was wanted to see if I could fit them in my ear so I bought them anyway. This time, I had a little more trouble getting the stick in, and when I did, it felt tighter than the previous stretch did.
So I bought a little red, orange and yellow stripey taper that I thought was ugly as hell but cheap enough (after all, I'd only use it once), and stuck it in. I didn't use any lubrication then, and still don't. Unfortunately, I slept on that side of my head that night so in the morning, it was slick with pus. Being the stubborn idiot I am, I obstinately left it in, and presto! By the end of the weekend it was fine, and I put the 10ga retainer in without any problem.
That kept me satisfied for some time, but after a while I began to tire of having the same old thing in my ear all the time, until one day in class during a particularly boring lesson, I took out the stud and started fiddling around with it. I discovered that it was just a wee bit smaller than the refill of the ballpoint pen I was using. Suddenly, I had a brainwave and cut off the end of the refill and angled one end like a taper. This I put into my ear without much trouble (it did feel sore for a while - must be the rough edges) so there it was, my first teeny tiny flesh tunnel.
I was hooked. I began experimenting with what I could put in my ear - from metal rivets to liquor straws. I never left those in for long though; I loved that little plastic ink refill tube.
And it just so happened that around this time, our biology practical lessons involved the usage of micropipettes with yellow disposable plastic tips. These I found interesting and highly useful, for the tips were tapered and perfect for stretching a piercing. So I took a few of those, cut them to the correct length, sanded and smoothened the edges, and shoved one into my piercing as far as it would go, and then some. These were tighter than anything I'd ever had in my ear. I never pushed them in all the way immediately though. Although I had no idea how thick these tips were, I knew my ear wouldn't like being stretched so quickly. So I'd push them in a little more each day, until I reached the thickest part of the micropipette tip. Then I cut off the rest of the tip that was poking out from behind my ear, and left it in my ear.
In June this year, my family went to Malaysia, where I bought my first proper taper. It was a black and white acrylic fang, with two O rings at either end. Although it was slightly larger than my pipette tip, it was obviously against the school rules to have a big black fang in a piercing, so I reverted back to my yellow micropipette tip.
However, I very much wanted to further stretch my lobes, but finding a transparent taper was proving very difficult indeed. By this time, I'd developed a goal - to stretch my piercing to a large enough gauge for a glo-stick to be inserted.
Bio practical came to my aid again. This time, the micropipette tips were blue, and they were the perfect size. I cut and sanded a tip, and shoved it in. It was much larger than the yellow one, and very tight. I kept the tip in place with an O ring from the black fang, pushing the rubber O ring in really tight. This kind of "pinched" my ear, and as time passed, the piercing would gradually stretch, and the tip would move further into the piercing from the pressure from the O ring.
It's been four days since the insertion of the blue micropipette tip, and the first time I measured the size of my piercing since the 10ga stud.
My right lobe piercing is now at 2ga.
It feels and looks great, and once the stretched lobe heals I'm going to buy a proper plug for it. I've had enough of putting strange stuff in my piercing. It's not something I'd recommend for others, but I'm the sort of person who'll try all sorts of stupid things, and if you do the same, you might end of compromising the health of your piercing, which is something you should never do in order to save a few measly cents. Anyway, I'm quite happy with this size and I think that's as far as I'm going to stretch it for now.
But hey, who knows what may happen in the future?