Cow Scratch

dixiechicken:

viewparadise:

prettywar:

elegantpsychosis:

kat270493:

Fact.

Use the click-through link for more information.  Or, simply, click here.

here’s another one

AAH!  Really awful!  I had no idea.

“Gun piercings are often crooked and off-center because of their method of creation.”

YUP.  That’s what happened to me when I got my ear lobes pierced.  The left piercing was placed correctly in the front but too low in the back.  I had to wait a really long time for it to close up to get it re-pierced.  I really wish I had thought to do research.  I still have a mark (scar?) where the old piercing was.

Add me to the “no idea” club. Got my ears pierced with a piercing gun when I was about 7 (and it hurt like you would NOT believe) and I had to let the holes go back because the left one was constantly draining and sore.

Yep.  Learned it over time, although I got my lobes done with a gun at Claire’s when I was 11 like just about every other girl.

Don’t have any real interest in other piercings (or tattoos for that matter) but you best believe I’ll be doing shit-tons of research on places if I ever do.

Aoookaaaaaay I have to say something about this.

When I first moved to the city at age 20, I was living with two roomies and had NO job. Nothing. The two “offers” I had fell through, so I applied at the mall I lived by. Claire’s was the first to give me not only an interview, but a job.

The biggest part of my training was piercing. I had to read through a binder and take a written test (either 100% or fail; you take until you pass), then a physical exam in knowing the equipment, how to clean the equipment, what it all did, etc.

Not going to lie - my first ear-piercing was terrifying. The thing is, there are rules and guidelines set in for a reason.

Crap like this about “WAAAUGH MY GAWD PROS DON’T USE PIERCING GUNS ALDKSJAGLJLAJG” is dumb and mis-informed. I got my ears pierced for the first time at age 11; I let one grow over because it kept getting infected. Why? Because my idiot mother kept ramming earrings with high nickel content into my ears, nickel being a metal that a large amount of the population react poorly to.

Do piercers screw it up? Sure they do, just like how there are lousy tattoo artists. My first ones were done by two old crones who ran a low-end jewelry store. Say what you want about place like Claire’s/Icing (I worked at both), but I trusted the people who worked with me. In BC (Canada), ear piercing is considered a minor surgery, hence the consent forms, consenting age, etc. It’s also why piercing guns should NEVER be used to pierce anything other than the flesh of the ear lobe. Anything higher and it gets into cartilage territory, where it can potentially crush the cartilage, giving the patient “cauliflower ear.”

I got my nose pierced at a Merle Norman about two years ago. When I walked in, I told the girl flat-out that I would like to see her equipment, as I was a trained piercer. She gladly pulled out the kit (it was a different kind of gun without a “backing,” hard to describe but perfectly safe and legit), and she walked me through the process of the piercing and the sterilization of the equipment. I went back a week later and got it done (zero pain or complications; it was perfect) because she was a professional.

With something as deep as body modding, don’t bitch and gripe about stupid stuff like this - just do your research. You wouldn’t get a tattoo from the creepy guy behind the 7-11, so don’t get a piercing if you feel you can’t trust the people who will administrate it. If “real pros don’t use piercing guns,” then by all means go to the unlicensed, mom-and-pop Italian jewelery stores where they use a thumbtack sterilized with boiling water (yes this is a thing).