STH Body Jewelry Blog

What is play piercing? Basically, it is any piercing made for the sensation or experience of being pierced where the hole is not kept by placing permanent jewelry in it and healing it open. Most commonly play piercing is done with hypodermic tips, also called points or sharps. Only the very surface layers of the skin are pierced and multiple piercings are often done in rows or circles on the body to enhance the aesthetic effect. Modern play piercing sometimes draws from ancient piercing rituals.

The needles come in sterile, single-use packaging and are ready to use right out of the box. The sizes used most often run in the high 20 gauges, i.e. 25g or 27g which is like a slightly large acupuncture size. The image to the right here shows the effect of having birthday cake-sized candles stuck into the plastic caps on the ends of the needle tips and then lit. The warm candle wax adds sensation but does not burn the skin and the visual effect is very striking.

When doing play piercing, protective nitrile or latex gloves should be worn. These minimize transmission of blood-born diseases and reduce the chance of introducing infectious agents. A “sharps” container is essential, as it refers to a medically-approved container for disposing of needles or any related hardware. These temporary piercings can be worn in the skin for just a few minutes, or for a few hours. Capping the points with small corks is recommended for extended wear. The needles can also be used like anchor points and string or yarn can be looped around the needles to form geometric patterns against the skin.

In a city like San Francisco, you will sometimes see play piercing done as performance art, especially in the fetish community. The pictures on the left came from a performance at a fetish-themed club event. The London performer Luci Fire sang a torch song while play piercings with candles were pierced and lit along her arms. This image shows her removing the needles herself and dropping them into a bottle. Sometimes you also see performances of flesh hook suspension. On occasion, piercing groups have staged large group hook rituals or Ball Dances (literally small balls or bells are sewn all over the participants). These can be anything from performance art to focused spiritual workings.

Some roots of modern piercing rituals can be seen in rites performed by Hindu-based sects in Southeast Asia. The Tamil held kavandi rituals, where the dancers “wore” large frameworks to hold long metal spears which would be used to pierce the skin. Each frame would hold two dozen or more of these spears. More modern rituals are still conducted by these people and the custom has shifted from the kavandi to skin hooks. Participants now often have anywhere from a half dozen to two dozen metal hooks pierced into the skin of their backs and they pull against ropes held by friends who pull back, carefully controlling weight and tension. This ritual is done as a walking pilgrimage along a sacred route. Their religion believes in worship through or in the body and see these intense endurance rituals as offerings to their gods.

By S.L. Wykes

Mercury News

SAN MATEO COUNTY PROVIDES MEDICAL RULES

Before tattoo artist Kevin Marr pierces the skin of a client, injecting ink in thousands of tiny needle pricks to permanently record a blossoming lotus on back or arm or leg, he prepares like a surgeon. Every needle, every ink cup, every armrest — everything that touches human skin is sterilized.

Tattooing is not just an art form, said Marr, who has owned his San Mateo shop for seven years and worked on hundreds of clients. “It’s also a medical-type procedure and needs to be treated as such.'’

That’s exactly the thinking behind a new San Mateo County ordinance approved Tuesday, crafted with the input of Marr and other local body-art practitioners.

San Mateo is the second Bay Area county — after San Francisco — and one of about a half-dozen statewide to require that tattoos, permanent makeup and body piercing be done with something more than just a registration card. Santa Clara County health officials will submit their version soon. After waiting eight years for the state to hand down its own regulation, California’s county health departments want to stop taking chances every time someone steps into a shop for a tattoo or body piercing.

“I hate doing this locally,'’ said Dean Peterson, the county’s environmental health director. “These are regulations that need to be standardized. But people don’t care what county they’re in; they just want to be safe.'’

San Mateo County’s ordinance includes a long list of operating procedures to be followed. Its requirements cover five pages, describing everything from faucet controls, floor conditions, ink handling and sterilizer testing to gloves, plastic coverings and waste disposal.

The fees charged for registration will cover the salary of an inspector who will make unannounced visits to about 50 tattoo and body-piercing shops and permanent-makeup facilities scattered throughout the county.

Practitioners will also have to pass a course on blood-borne pathogens. Anything involving the piercing of the skin, Peterson said, “is something where the transmission is not just a simple food-borne infection you can recover from. It’s hepatitis B and HIV — serious threats to health.'’

Peterson and other county health officials statewide have been talking about such regulations for years, but San Mateo County officials were pushed into action by nine complaints in four years. In one case, the complainer said dogs were in a procedure area. Another was about a piercing done on a minor.

Two hepatitis B cases were reported, Peterson said, but investigators were unable to confirm either case came from the named tattoo parlors.

Santa Clara County has about 250 body-art businesses, said its environmental health director, Ben Gale. And as a whole, they’ve been very supportive of the ordinance the county is drafting. “We don’t have many shabby operators or fly-by-night facilities,'’ he said.

Until the county has more extensive regulations, Gale’s department is working to educate practitioners. Last year, about 50 people attended a safe-procedures workshop.

His staff also attends body-art conferences to try “to keep its finger on the pulse'’ of the industry, Gale said.

San Mateo County’s ordinance exempts piercing done on the outer lobe of the ear — meaning those shopping mall carts that pierce ears can continue to do business without an on-site autoclave or 45 square feet of space.

“I’m hoping other counties will move forward,'’ Peterson said. “The popularity of tattoos is increasing, so these kinds of regulations are very important to have out there.'’

Every year hundreds of Minnesotans pierce their tongues, insert spherical metal jewelry and call it “fashion.”

Dentists call it something entirely different: “The wrecking ball.”

“We aren’t real happy with tongue piercing” says Dr. Marie Oberle, a dentist in Columbia Heights. “People click the balls against their teeth, or accidentally bite down on them. We end up seeing micro fractures in tooth enamel or broken molars.”

Tongue and lip piercing also can lead to gum disease, according to a recent study at Ohio State University.

“Mouth piercing pokes a hole in the body’s defense mechanism and says to the bacteria, ‘Come on in,’ ” said Dr. Matthew Messina, spokesman for the American Dental Association. “I’m still waiting for somebody to give me a positive reason for getting their tongue pierced.”

Oberle said patients will come to her with a broken tooth and say, ” ‘I don’t know how this happened.’ I’m thinking, ‘You’re wearing a metal ball in your mouth; do you think this could be why?’ ” Repairing such damage can run from $800 to $1,000, she said.

Although national and area piercers said they haven’t seen an uptick in oral piercing — that wave crested four or five years ago — Oberle says her patients are on the rise: “I’ve seen more this year than last.”

She and the ADA’s Messina say they urge patients to remove any jewelry that comes in contact with teeth or gums. At the very least, they suggest replacing metal tongue studs with less damaging acrylic ones.

“I give a pretty stern lecture,” Messina said. “Showing them the damage is pretty easy. I just get out a mirror.”

Krista Neumann, 24, has been on the receiving end of such dental discourse. The St. Paul administrative assistant got her tongue pierced when she was 18 “because I could.”

Her dentist “was not happy,” she recalled. Neumann quickly switched to acrylic jewelry “not because anything happened to me personally, but I’d heard stories from other people.”

Her dentist persisted in his pleas for her to remove her tongue piercing altogether, even showing her that her gums were beginning to recede at the front of her mouth.

She finally took out the jewelry and let her pierced tongue heal (it doesn’t take too long) last year. “I saw what it had started to do,” she said. “But, really, I just felt like I was too old to have it.”

St. Paul dietitian Katie Holman, 23, said she’s beginning to feel the same way about her tongue piercing, which she’s had for five years. “I’ve never had any problem with my teeth and gums,” she said. “I don’t play with the jewelry.”

Still, she said, “My dentist keeps telling me it’s not smart.”

Dentists are ‘very judgmental’

The Denver-based Association of Professional Piercers has a decidedly different take on “the wrecking ball” effect.

“Do we feel attacked? Absolutely. Dentists come from a very judgmental perspective,” said Alicia Cardenas, CEO of the organization. “They probably do see a lot of piercings that are improperly placed, either by people who have done their own piercings or young people who haven’t taken the time to find a good piercer, which is crucial.”

Cardenas suggests that dentists stop haranguing patients to take out the piercings (and possibly cause the patients to stop coming to see them altogether). “Instead, they should guide them in a direction where they won’t continue to do damage to their teeth — either with smaller [jewelry] pieces or acrylic balls.”

However, even piercers urge caution with tongue piercing. At St. Sabrina’s Parlor of Purgatory in Uptown, piercer Scott Wilkinson said he averages about one tongue piercing a day. Still, he added, he has turned away potential clients whose mouths or tongues may be too small to properly accommodate a piercing.

“I’ve had people walk away in tears, but it’s for the safety of the customer,” he said.

In addition, Wilkinson lectures each potential tongue piercer before going ahead with the procedure. “I let them know that if they start playing with it, it will ruin their teeth — sometimes to the point where their teeth will fall out.”

Wilkinson knows what he’s talking about. His tongue was pierced for eight years, along with other oral piercings, before he removed them all.

“I used to chew on my labret [a lower lip piercing] all the time and it gave me some teeth problems,” he said.

POSTED: 5:57 pm PST November 16, 2005
UPDATED: 6:32 pm PST November 16, 2005

Mendez gave her until the count of three to spit out the object. That’s when Mendez learned her daughter’s tongue had been pierced in a school restroom.

“She showed me her tongue,” Mendez said. “There was something big and hard on the tongue.”

Her daughter said a girl in the 11th grade provided her piercing — and others — in a restroom at Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies (SOCES) in Tarzana.

Parents said the girl was running a small business from the restroom. The girl used a needle and rubbing alcohol to pierce classmates’ tongues for a fee.

Pilar Rodriguez said the same student pierced her 14-year-old daughter’s tongue.

“For us, this is really, really bad,” Rodriguez said.

Both mothers brought their children to a doctor for examinations that included HIV and hepatitis tests.

“We addressed the issue and appropriate disciplinary action was taken,” said SOCES Assistant Principal Mariann Aguilar. “The child wasn’t forced. She was a willing participant.”

An employee at a tattoo and piercing parlor said such procedures are dangerous because of the tongue’s many blood vessels.

“Out on a Whim” is owned and operated by Kenny Weinstock, a.k.a. “Kenny the Piercer.” The shop owner has been through a lot to get to where he is today, and is now running a store that has pierced more than 13,000 clients in four years.

Weinstock used to work in the surgical unit of Kishwaukee Hospital, as well as the blood drawing lab. But he was unhappy with his career, as he got tired of working constantly with sick and dying people. After leaving the hospital, he became first interested in body piercing through a friend who owned a shop. Weinstock went to Madison, Wis. to study the art of piercing and tattooing and did an apprenticeship there.

After being trained and licensed in Wisconsin, he started to make piercing house calls, traveling to customer’s houses with his equipment. Although his friends constantly were questioning his change in careers, he stuck to his decision.

Finally, in 2001, Weinstock opened his own store in DeKalb. He started with just one tray of jewelry and a few customers, but now has more than 20,000 pieces of jewelry available in the store, and an online catalog available at www.whimbodyjewelry.com. He performs 30-40 piercings a day and is open seven days a week. While he struggles still with the fact his art form is not totally accepted, he said he pays careful attention to detail.

He takes it seriously because he knows not all piercers do take the jobs as seriously as they should. Weinstock is the only licensed and fully-insured studio in DeKalb. The state has no regulations on body piercing shops, and because of this many shops are not as clean and staffs not as trained as they could be.

“You have to be very careful in Illinois,” Weinstock said. “When you walk into a tattoo and piercing shop, your eyes need to be your guide because there are no regulations to keep you safe. If you can see even one reason to leave, do it. In most shops, there is no one looking out for you except you.”

One customer, Shaun Phillips, came in for advice from Weinstock. She recently had her navel pierced and was concerned with the outcome.

“Kenny was closed so I went somewhere else in town,” she explained. “[The piercer] just pierced it and sent me on my way with some oil. He was really ruff with me, and I was scared because I was told I needed some cleaning ointment and it really hurt, so I came to talk to Kenny.”

Weinstock discovered her piercer had used the wrong piece of jewelry, an eyebrow ring - which is too small and thin for the navel - and also had not cleaned it properly. He gave Phillips some ointment and cleaning instructions.

Weinstock offers free jewelry changes, cleaning instructions, ointments and advice to all customers, even if they are not his original piercings.

“Some people aren’t comfortable changing their own body jewelry. I’d rather not have people shoving stuff in that doesn’t fit,” he said. “I know it’s important for me to help people.”

His desire to help people is what led him to be trained in Wisconsin. He took OSHA-approved training courses on blood diseases, emergency procedures and cleanliness. He has an industrial sterilizer in the studio, which is checked by a lab regularly, and sterilizes everything after every customer. His employees also are constantly at work, trying to keep the store sterile and neat.

While all these practices are expensive, he believes it is his concern for the customers’ well-being that gives him the large amount of business he has.

A teenager died of blood poisoning after having his lip pierced, an inquest has heard.
Daniel Hindle, 17, of Carvale Drive, Richmond, Sheffield, died in December 2002 - two months after the piercing at Body Poppers in Sheffield.

He was first admitted to hospital in October 2002 with a fever and vomiting.

His mother, Christina Anderson, said a doctor told her Daniel had the most severe kind of septicaemia and had only a 5% chance of recovery.

“In effect, he was telling me Daniel was going to die,” Ms Anderson told Sheffield Coroner’s Court.

“It was then that I told him about the lip piercing. Going back over the events he seemed to agree that that would be the cause of the injury.”

‘Shock and horror’

Ms Anderson said the first she knew about the piercing was when Daniel walked through the door with a ring through his lip.

“Daniel was quite proud of it. He thought it looked cool,” she said.

“My first reaction was shock and horror. I suppose it’s a normal motherly reaction.”

Ms Anderson broke down in the witness box as she told the inquest that her son, a keen snowboarder, was in the “prime of his life”.

In a statement released by her solicitor before the inquest opened, she said: “Our family has waited a long time to get to the bottom of why and how my son died.

“We have worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the potential dangers of body piercing and hope change will be brought following this so Daniel’s death won’t have been in vain.”

By KATIE PESZNECKER
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: October 27, 2005)
I GOT MY FIRST TATTOO IN COLLEGE.

I thought it would be sexy, a little rebellious, even beautiful. The idea of having something on my body forever? So cool. Forget birthmark. I wanted a life mark. And at that point in my life, a tattoo was basically the only long-term commitment I could make.

My friend Andy paid for it. He was one of those inked-up guys who thought others were somehow incomplete canvases without at least one tattoo. As the appointment approached, I got more excited, even anxious — like how you feel before a first date or on the cusp of a big trip.

In a journal entry dated Feb. 25, 1998, I wrote: “I’m getting a tattoo today! Of course Mom will kill me if she ever finds out. It will be a salmon, of course, in Native American-style art. At least Mom would approve of the art itself. … I’ve wanted to do this for so long. I kept thinking last night how wild the concept is. I’m changing my body — forever.”

Just before the appointment, I sat in the alley behind my sorority with my friend Holly, sharing a beer. She had recently got a pink heart tattooed on her tush — the same place I was putting mine.

“Holly,” I said, “what if I don’t like it?”

“Pez,” she said, exasperated. “It’s your ass. What else are you going to do with it?”

At the tattoo parlor, the guy took us into a back room. I lay down on my stomach, and he had me pull down my sweats a little. This small act of exposure felt nothing like the doctor’s office, in one of those awkward papery gowns. It was more intimate, almost defiant, and far more memorable.

That night, I wrote in my journal:

“Well, I did it — I got the tattoo! It looks amazing. I’m so glad I did it. It was a crazy experience, letting a stranger permanently ink me while Andy sat watching. It hurt at first — I asked Joey, the artist, ‘So what will this feel like?’ His reply? ‘Like someone’s dragging a red-hot thumbtack through your flesh.’ Hm, lovely! But after a while, I was numb and I really couldn’t feel anything.”

ANCIENT RITUAL
Tattoos and body piercings date back tens of thousands of years, at least since the building of the Egyptian pyramids. Only the pharaoh was allowed to have his belly button pierced. Tlingits, Aztecs and Mayans pierced their tongues. Women in Borneo tattooed symbols on their arms to advertise certain skills. The Chinese used tattoos to mark criminals.

Today, the inked designs and body jewelry are increasingly accepted, popular and decorative. Life magazine in 1936 estimated just 6 percent of Americans were tattooed, compared with a Harris Poll in 2003 that said 16 percent have at least one tattoo. That spikes in certain age groups: The poll said about one-third of people in their late 20s and 30s are tattooed. And many polled said a tattoo made them feel more sexy and attractive.

But beauty is in the other guy’s eye, right? Forty-two percent of non-tattooed people polled said they felt tattoos make a person less attractive, and 36 percent said a tattoo makes someone less sexy. Ouch!

It’s just reality: Some people will never like tattoos or piercings.

Others obsessively seek out designs, go under the needle and grit their teeth. Some go for designs that are personally significant or that honor some person or memory or allegiance.

Others pick something that just looks cool. Mike Morgan calls these tats “flash.” They don’t mean anything; they’re just neat to look at.

“Everybody starts with flash,” Morgan said, rubbing his left forearm where he got one of his first tattoos — a lion, because his astrological sign is Leo. Not that he cared. “I was 19, and at the time, there was no forethought,” he said.

Compare that to the massive tattoo that covers Morgan’s back and runs down along his sides: a strikingly detailed swirl of images from the Bible’s Book of Revelation: St. Michael tossing Lucifer from heaven, the four horsemen below, a frightening seven-headed dragon. Woven throughout are angels and eagles, with crushed and trampled people beneath.

“I have three chapters done and 17 to go,” Morgan said, flashing a grin.

His tattoo is a tribute to his faith. He spent hours researching biblical imagery and, with longtime local tattoo artist Larry Allen, crafted his design.

It’s surprising to see this behemoth sprawl of ink on this trim man. Sure, he has a bit of a biker look — tangled white beard and long, still-brownish hair pulled back in a smooth ponytail.

But he’s a nurse. He’s 50. He wears glasses. He doesn’t drink or do drugs.

“I like to say tattoos are my only addiction,” Morgan said. “I would suggest to anyone who’s going to get a tattoo: Always put it to where you can cover it up. Because as accepted as it is, you’ll still be discriminated against.”

FOR ME
It’s amazing what you can cover up.

Take Ann Berke. See the thin bleach-blonde in a track jacket and drawstring sweats, without an artificial blemish showing.

Then watch her disrobe, and be completely amazed.

Berke, a longtime Chilkoot Charlie’s bartender, has spent more than 100 hours under the needle of Vincent Almanza at Rebirth Tattoo on C Street. The result: an elaborate and elongated design that begins on her right breast, wraps around her right side, crosses her back, travels over her left hip and down her leg to her ankle. Covering her upper back are three female faces that weave into the design below.

And it all started with a single angel on her back.

“Then I wanted clouds behind it,” said Berke, 35. “And then it was ‘Oh let’s put a planet behind it,’ and it just went from there.”

Her snaking tattoo begins up top with the “hand of God,” as Berke described it. Angels spill out. Beneath them, the universe unfolds, sprinkling stars and planets toward her hip. There, “the tree of life,” ripe and full, with a nude Adam and Eve encircling its trunk as a single apple drops from the branches. The roots below the tree blend into da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

“And then it just spills down into Satan and hell, demons, fallen souls, the Book of the Dead,” Berke said, tugging up a pants leg and tracing the images with a finger. “I have great faith in God because of all the things I’ve been through.”

Berke has suffered a devastating house fire and the loss of a brother, and is also a breast cancer survivor. Almanza did more work on Berke’s main tattoo after her mastectomy. Where there were discolorations and scar tissue, he inked in leaves, olive branches and a dove.

“Tattoos always hurt,” Berke said. “I’m not going to lie to you, dude. But if you want it bad enough, you’re going to sit through it. Why? Like I said, I’ve been through a lot. My faith in God has really helped with everything. The tattoo is a way of showing my faith. I didn’t do it for attention. I did it for me.”

It’s a common theme: I did it for me.

When Sarah Pederson went to Almanza for the tattoo that eventually crawled up her arms and met across her back, she already had four smaller tats. But they were in hard-to-see places — her lower back, her inner thigh, her ankles.

“I wanted something I could see, finally, just for myself,” said Pederson, 30. “I wanted something feminine, and I’m a big moon-and-stars girl. So I told him I wanted this little star.” She pointed to a star the size of a quarter on the top of her right hand.

She asked Almanza to just design something around that. He drew graceful, curving lines, twining and curling to a few inches past her wrist.

At that point, Pederson said, it seemed done.

It wasn’t.

Three years and several appointments later, both arms are circled in similar swooping, coiling designs. They connect across her back. Hidden in the tattoo are small touches she asked for — her initials on her back, for instance, and a “36″ on her upper left arm as a shout-out to her friends in the band 36 Crazyfists.

It was finished in time for Pederson to compete in Chilkoot Charlie’s Arctic Inkfest competition Aug. 18. She won judge’s choice for best female tattoo.

Berke, as a Koot’s employee, won in the only category she was allowed to enter: people’s choice for best tattoo.

Morgan won the whole darn thing, and a trip to Vegas to boot.

It was Pederson’s first show. She was excited, she said, to finally show off the finished work. Even her grandma came.

“I have never had issues with people noticing the tattoos,” Pederson said. “I’m an accountant. I work in a fairly professional world. My thoughts are, if they’re not going to hire me because I have tattoos you can see, then I don’t want to work there or with those kind of people.”

CONNECTIONS
Sometimes it takes a while to get to that level, if you ever even do. When I got my tattoo, I spent months, even years, keeping it secret from my mom.

Then one day about four years ago, Mom called. She said she got a blue crescent moon — an ancient symbol of female mystique and power — tattooed atop her right wrist. In plain sight. My mom! Miss straight-laced who won’t even cross the street unless that little “walk” sign is showing.

Why? My grandma had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

When Mom told this to her tattoo artist, he only smiled and said, “Ah. The blood sacrifice.”

“It’s like, by sharing the pain and spilling the blood, that you somehow join in,” Mom said when I asked her about it recently.

“My mother spilled blood giving life to me, and now I could spill blood and maybe feel a little connected,” Mom said. “At that point I had been thinking of a tattoo for quite a while, and on the day I found out she had breast cancer, I thought, ‘Well this is the time.’ Also that day was the full moon, the blood moon — one of the names for the full moon that falls in October. So I did it.”

Months later, Grandma beat the cancer. On the next full moon, with the family gathered in Oregon for the holidays, we went to the tattoo parlor — Grandma, my sister, me. We each got that same blue moon carved on our arms.