When I was sixteen I got my right eyebrow horizontally pierced. It grew out shortly after my seventeenth birthday, and had been in there for all of one month.
At A Glance Author CJ When N/A Studio bodycraft Location nottingham, england I got this piercing because I'd been looking on bme with my sister for cool piercings and we both smiled at the same thing. It was a girl with several horizontal piercings over each eyebrow, so there were 6 black balls above each eyebrow. It really gave you something cool to look at, being strangely mesmerising. I had decided that this was the piercing for me.
I asked a few friends what they thought. A lot of them had trouble imagining it until I got a photo of myself and drew two silver dots over the top of my right eyebrow.
"Ohhhhh," they said in realization. I took this as the go-ahead from my friends. Now for mother's consent.
My mum is extremely sweet and totally naïve, and I knew just how to work this. I left the house saying "mum, I'm getting my nose pierced." So she'd freak out about that because she considers them disgustingly unhygienic, and then I'd get something that wouldn't be as bad so that she'd be happy with me.
I met up with two friends in town who knew my plans and we went to Access All Areas but at the last minute they said "You're eighteen right?"
After that minor setback, my friend suggested Bodycraft. I'd never been there before, and I was so keen to get this piercing I was prepared to do it myself. We walked to Bodycraft and waited for them to fit me in. I should have known how bad this place was when I saw the book you have to sign when getting a piercing. At Bodycraft, they don't seem to care at what age someone is pierced and there's certainly no consent form that I was aware of.
It was my turn to walk past the tattoo rooms to the piercing room. I took my friend and followed a short, fat, bald guy with his conch pierced and lobes stretched to 00ga. He didn't tell me anything about the piercing except "don't let children touch your face because they'll go straight for the shiny thing above your eye. Babies especially."
He cleaned the skin around the area he was going to pierce, put two dots on it where the barbell was going to enter and exit the skin and then sprayed anaesthetic on it as I held tissue just over my eye so it didn't drip into it. He tried to get the clamps on, and failed three times, eventually resorting to just pulling my eyebrow out and shoving a needle through. At that point I knew I could have done a better job myself.
He then told me to clean it with soap and I regretted it there and then.
When my mother saw the piercing, her reaction was "Oh. That's....nice." My friends' was "wow, did it hurt?! It looks like it did. I bet it did. It didn't? oh." And when I went back to school it was "You look like a hardass."
Taking care of it was easy (I didn't abide by the soap instructions). I clean my piercings twice a day for the first week and then whenever they need it, rather than being anal about it because the last thing I wanted was a dried out hole in my face. I just used salt water and tried not to fiddle with it. This was the beauty of this piercing : simplicity. A simple person had put it there, and it was simple to look after.
Of course, at school I was asked to remove it, and by this point, it had already migrated a lot. I retired the piercing and received a scar for my trouble.
Two months later I went back to Access and got it done properly. It would have stayed in for at least three months this time but school get a little antsy about these things.
Next time I get my eyebrow done, I'm DIYing it. If you're in the Nottingham area of England, don't ever go to Bodycraft. Ever. I've never loved and loathed a piercing so much at the same time. Also, horizontal eyebrows are high maintenance. If you just nudge it slightly with a towel, it migrates – quickly. I have a line about half a centimetre long just above my right eyebrow due to a migrated piercing, and two dots above my left eyebrow.
When I DIY it next time, I'm going to do it at a forty-five degree angle rather than totally vertical or totally horizontal. I'm going to put my own little slant on it (apologies for the pun). Not that I would recommend DIY unless you're totally aware of the problems it can cause and how dangerous it can be.
Eyebrow piercings don't hurt, but if you get one, make sure they know what they're doing and that they use a plastic barbell, not a metal one.