For years I've always wanted to look just that little bit different from everyone else, partly for the feeling of just being different and partly for the shock value. I have this fear of slipping into the human equivalent of beige. This resulted in dying hair, outrageous clothing etc but I always balked at any sort of piercing or tattoos, oh I wanted them, longed for them but the thought of pain always stopped me, until I came to university. I gained Internet access and suddenly, in a round about way, a peek inside the world of body modification. My love affair with stretched lobes had began. For months I ooed and ahhhed at pictures of people with large lobes, with amazing and varied jewellery hanging from their ears and I wanted them. It took me a few months to work up the courage to go into my towns piercing shop and even longer to ask if they stretched lobes, which they did. That first appointment took me from 1.6mm to the huge (in my eyes) 2.4mm. I had my first actual pair of tunnels. No one else in my year had anything like them. The next year was spent gradually having my ears tapered up. It was an amazing moment the first time I could see through my tunnels. I spent the following months grossing out my friends my sticking all sort of random objects through my ears , oh the fun to be had with a knife at lunchtime.
At A Glance Author Dreadfulfaery Contact Dreadfulfaery@bme.anon When A month ago Location Ayr, Scotland I had the usual reaction from people I knew about how I was mutilating myself but in my eyes having stretched lobes made me more attractive. I've always loved the pictures from tribes in Africa with the women who have lip plates, stretched ears and necks, all worn proudly as signs of their femininity and beauty. I couldn't stretch my neck but I could stretch my lobes and hopefully this year start to stretch my lip piercings. But back to my beloved lobes.
After I hit 11mm, which was done with some difficulty with the taper, I left my lobes alone to heal and thicken up on the advice of my piercer who thought that my lobes may have reached their stretching point.
I did the usual routine of hot salt soaks and massaging vitamin E oil into them and then I started taking out my plugs overnight, giving my ears room to breathe. After all this TLC my lobes looked much better than ever - im quite reactive towards most materials that my plugs are made from but I managed to get my hands on some cobalt blue glass claws and they were amazing, so cool and heavy. Glass appears to be the best material for my ears. I loved the feeling of them dangling against the side of my neck and for a few weeks that was enough but slowly the urge to stretch came over me again. I kept seeing pictures on BME of larger lobes (a deliberate form of self-torture ) but I knew that I couldn't have my ears tapered again so I decided to try out the tape-wrap method for the first time. I bought a roll of PTFE tape from my local ironmongers and set about wrapping my plugs in their first layer of the thin white tape. Each day I added a thin layer and slowly layer by layer my lobes increased in size. Unfortunately I had a reaction to the tape - my ears began swollen, hot and irritated. It felt like I had a think layer of hard scar tissue lining the inside of the lobe (how that happens I still don't know) so that meant I had to downsize again.
Meanwhile I was browsing the net for my biggest addiction - jewellery and I stumbled across the excellent Bodyart Forms, not only did they have the most amazing range of plugs, tunnels etc but they had a sale!!! Funny how my favourite words are all four lettered - lobe, plug, sale....
I set about ordering several different sets of plugs to give me something to work towards and when they finally arrived 3 weeks later my ears had settled enough for my to re-stretch. Downsizing and daily salt soaks with applications of antiseptic creams had taken away the irritation and dryness and after a few weeks I had reached my target of 14mm, several sixes up from my original "target".
Now im sitting at the computer typing this with a pair of green stone plugs in 14mm hanging in my lobes, with a set for 16mm upstairs. A future target, and after that who knows. Ill stop when I reach my perfect size. I may have to remove the rest of my facial piercing when I graduate but I cant see me ever downsizing my lobes to normal because to me my stretched lobe are normal - they make me beautiful.