For a long time I'd wanted to get my ears pierced, and for a long time I battled with my parents over the idea. Finally, a few months ago, my friends and I decided to go get tattoos. After finally showing my parents, they both agreed it was tasteful and nice. From there it was an easy break to talking about piercings, and amazingly, they both seemed ok with me getting my ears done.
At A Glance Author Koji Contact Koji@bme.anon When A week ago Artist Robert Studio Apocalypse Tattoo Location Seattle, WA Cut now to a few weeks ago. I decided I was going to go ahead and get my ears pierced, but the size and the style were still up in the air. I talked it out with friends and we decided that my naturally big lobes were perfect for stretching, but to what size was still a big debate. I personally am not a fan of stretching that big, simply for the strangeness of being able to put my finger through my ear, but several friends tried to convince me otherwise. We continued to battle it out until we narrowed it down to whether I wanted a smallish 14 all the way up to a bigger than decent 8. I decided I would wait and see with that. But the next debate was the more annoying of the two. Should I go to a Claire's or Piercing Pagoda type place to get the initial holes and then just stretch them myself, or should I fork over the extra cash to go and have my tattoo shop do them. The debate lasted a good week or two with sides arguing their cases pretty evenly. I was initially against the idea of Claire's but people kept trying to convince me things would be fine if I just had them done there. In the end, the overwhelming amount of criticism for gun's and the inexperienced users of said guns convinced me to just fork out the cash. In retrospect, this was a damn good idea. If you want to pierce your ears, it's going to be semi to fully permanent. Just with a tattoo, it's nice to save cash, but do you really want to skimp on something that is going to be with you for a long, long time?
So, I went out on a Friday night to my tattoo shop and told the artist and 2 other guys working that I wanted my lobes pierced. They took one look at my ears and all said right off that they were hoping I would be stretching. I told them my thoughts, and because I was considering stretching up to 8's, they ended up recommending a set of 10g captive ball rings. So Robert the artist took me in the back and pierced each lobe at a 12g (to prevent excess bleeding) and then stretched each hole, with a taper, up to a 10g right away. The pain wasn't too bad, though I'd say it was worse than my tattoo. What I do have to mention is that you can feel the needle cutting/tearing through the flesh of your lobe. Because of that, if you're squeemish or don't like pain, you should consider starting small or using a dreaded gun. But even past the tearing feeling, the most shocking part was the stretch. I'd been doing a lot of research about the piercing and stretching process, so I was expecting a great deal of pain. In the end, I honestly didn't feel much of a change in pain as he pushed the taper through the holes to stretch them. Maybe it's because a lot of the stories I read were people trying to skip sizes along the way.
Since then I've had no real pain except for the odd bump to the lobes as I put on a shirt or roll over in my sleep and put pressure on them. The cleaning has been very simple, comprising of the usual soaping in the shower and warm sea salt water soaks twice a day (three times if they're more painful than normal). It has been a nuisance though, as I don't get to sleep much, so bad sleep and waking up early to ensure plenty of cleaning time for the lobes has been painful. But in the end, totally worth it. Everyone I've talked to likes them a lot, though some are still trying to convince me that plugs will look better.
My future plans for the holes are to wait until the healing process is done. I'm going to give the holes 4 weeks or so to heal just in case, especially since they're bigger than normal and are taking a bit of a beating from my love for shifting as I sleep. After that, I'm going to pick up a set of 10g plugs and pincers, and look around for a nice set of tunnels. With all that in stow, I think I'll be set for anything that comes for the next 6 months. Somewhere down the road, I'll consider stretching to 8's, but it'll take a lot of convincing to get me there, as I really like the size of the 10's.
So as a recommendation to anyone planning on stretching their ears with no holes already there... Do yourself a favor. Get the piercing done properly at a local tattoo shop, and save yourself 4-6 weeks of a stupid looking stud from Claire's or some crap. Not to mention, it's safer and a lot less painful having a professional do it.