all kinds of different ear piercings

Anti Tragus - An anti-tragus piercing is an ear piercing done through the ridge of cartilage immediately above the earlobe (and "across from" the tragus). To many people's surprise, it is also one of the most painful piercings!

Daith -
This ear piercing passes through the ear's innermost cartilage fold. In most areas this piercing is pronounced "day-th" although the proper pronounciation is "doth" (rhymes with "moth")
A client of Erik Dakota that is said to have been studying Hebrew in college first named this piercing ("daath" meaning "knowledge"). Her reasoning was that the piercer must have been very "smart" to figure out how to do the piercing. The actual root word of the piercing is the "da'at", a part of the Kabbalistic tree of life traditionally representing the union of wisdom and understanding. In more modern times daath has come to represent the void or the abyss ("the sacred nothing"), or the hole left behind when Malkuth fell out of the Garden of Eden

Ear Lobe -
Earlobe piercing and earlobe stretching is perhaps history's most common piercing. The typical placement for an earlobe piercing is directly in the center of the lobe and can vary from one earring to multiple earrings. Earlobe piercings other than directly "across" the lobe include lengthwise transverse lobe piercings as well as vertical lobe piercings.

Forward Helix -
A piercing on the inside of the upper rim of ear cartilage, close to the head.

Helix -
The helix piercing is any piercing through the rim of the cartilage (thus making it susceptible to complications such as Ear Collapse if care is not taken to use proper tools and procedures; for example, Piercing guns have been shown to be capable of causing cartilage to shatter).

Industrial -
An industrial piercing is two or more piercings connected by a single barbell. In normal usage it refers to an ear piercing whereby two helix piercings are connected by a single straight (or curved) barbell. While most industrials are a straight bar connecting two helix piercings, they are also often done vertically (sometimes more than one, becoming an ear cage) or through piercings other than the helix, such as rook to helix piercing or inner or outer conch piercings.

Inner Conch -
The inner conch piercing is a piercing through the innermost shell of the ear, next to the ear canal itself. Piercings through the outer shell are called Outer Conch Piercings. Historically it was performed by the Mangebetu of Zaire and the Gorakhnathis.
While this piercing is often done as a standard piercing, a great many people choose to Dermal Punch this piercing immediately to a larger gauge. It should be noted that making significant changes to the structure of the conch can cause minor loss of hearing. Large gauge inner conch piercings and other piercings that noticeably alter the structure of the ear will make slight differences in the ability of your ear to channel sound (like a funnel) into the inner ear. The degree of this change should be extremely minor in normal circumstances and most people arent even aware of it
Most people pronounce this piercing with a soft "ch" (ie. as in "cherry"), although the "official" (and less common) pronunciation is "konk" with a hard "k" at the end

Lobe Orbital -
A lobe orbital is best described as two earlobe piercings fitted with a single piece of curved jewelry (captive bead rings, circular barbells, etc).

Orbital -
Similar to an industrial piercing, an orbital piercing is two piercings connected by a single ring.

Outer Conch -
An outer conch piercing is a piercing through the outer shell of the ear. It is actually a somewhat unusual placement when it comes to "normal" sized piercing because most people tend to pierce along the edge of the ear (helix piercing) which one could argue are not really outer conch piercings, or do inner conch piercing instead.

Ragnar -
The Ragnar piercing is a local term for a "deep snug" piercing; sort of half way between a snug piercing and a transverse lobe piercing. As you can see from the picture, the jewelry enters the body inside the ear roughly where a snug would start, and then exits on the edge of the lobe/helix.

Rook -
The rook piercing is an ear piercing through the fold of cartilage between the inner and outer conch (the anti-helix). Care must be taken with it during healing, as it is easy to contaminate (and damage) from things like telephones touching it.

Snug-
This cartilage piercing passes through the vertical ridge that "outlines" but does not edge the ear. Technically speaking, this is an "anti-helix piercing," although snug seems to be the term in most common circulation.

Tragus -
Piercings through the tragus, the little nub in front of the ear canal, are a common form of ear piercing. This piercing is not known to have a historical basis.
This piercing can be done with a captive bead ring, barbells or even a labret stud. This piercing should have no effect on hearing, nor is it linked to facial paralysis or any other urban legends.

Transverse Lobe -
A transverse lobe is an earlobe piercing turned 90 degrees such that the length of the piercing is parallel to the sagittal plane of the earlobe. Most often, it runs as close to horizontally as the ear will permit

Vertical Lobe -
A vertical lobe piercing is just that; a piercing, usually using a straight barbell, travelling from the top of the lobe (ie. the anti-tragus) down and exiting at the bottom of the lobe. It is essentially a transverse lobe piercing turned 90°.

Vertical Tragus -
Using a curved barbell (or other jewelry), the tragus may be pierced vertically. Many piercings that appear to be a vertical tragus piercing are actually surface piercings located immediately in front of the tragus. These can be done with a curved barbell as well, but are prone to rejection. The chance of rejection can be reduced by using surface bars, as well as having the piercing done by an experienced piercer. Even under optimal conditions though, they can still reject.

MODIFY! (the movie)

All of us know we should not pre-judge others, not to judge a book by its cover.
Does this feeling of acceptance apply to people who modify their body beyond what
is normal? Extreme is relative to perception. It is human nature to fear what we do
not understand. What is ‘normal’?

Everyone modifies their body in one form or another to help show on the outside
how they feel on the inside.

Using intirely original music, including over forty never before heard songs from
more than twenty new artists, this original groundbreaking documentary hits the
screen rockin’ right from the start.

For the first time ever, in their own words, the finest, more well spoken, talented,
surgeons, piercers, tattooists, cutters, body artists, and pioneers of body modification
in the United States, show and tell all in the Committed Films motion picture
‘MODIFY’.

You will meet more than thirty of the most amazing modified people that have ever
lived, and the body artists that have changed them forever. We have traveled the
country and have filmed more than fifty body modification procedures including
tanning, waxing, piercing, branding, scarification, genital beading, elective
amputations, bodybuilding, tattooing, tongue splitting, non-surgical implants, plastic
surgeries, trans-gender surgeries, and everything in between.

Why have they chosen to do this to their bodies?

We explore their thoughts on the difference between body modification and
mutilation, their feelings on discrimination, addiction, religion and the legal limits
regarding the right to choose what someone can or can not do to their own body.

CHECK IT OUT!

http://www.modifythemovie.com/index2.html

it is also now available on netflix.

modern primitive

Modern primitives or urban primitives are people in developed nations who engage in body modification rituals and practices while making reference or homage to the rite of passage practices in "primitive cultures"These practices may include body piercing, tattooing, play piercing, flesh hook suspension, corset training, scarification, branding, and cutting. The motivation for engaging in these varied practices may be personal growth, rite of passage, or spiritual

I came across this interesting article today....

"Modern Primitives": The Accelerating Collision of Past and Future in the Postmodern Era

Today, largely thanks to publishers such as Re/Search and Loompanics, Autonomedia, and Amok Press, many people are familiar today with the "modern primitive" movement. They know that it involves some sort of strange juxtaposition of high technology and "low" tribalism, animism, and body modification - a kind of 'Technoshamanism,' if you will, at once possession trance and kinetic dance. In books like William Gibson's Count Zero , ultracomplex Artificial Intelligences (AIs) take on the personality of Haitian Voudoun deities, seizing the minds of initiates through neural networks, creating an ersatz technoreligion.
The idea of the "primitive" is of course one from anthropology's abandoned socioevolutionary past. While invented to simply function as a descriptive for temporal phases, it inevitably also functioned as an evaluative term, suggesting that those societies to which it was applied were inferior in terms of literacy, knowledge, technology, social organization, or moral judgement - in a word, they lacked 'civilization.' The notion was of course inescapably ethnocentric, since it assumed that all societies on the planet were on an undeviating climb toward the standards of Western culture with regards to religion (monotheism), marriage practices (monogramy), economics (the free market), governance (representative democracy), etc. The 'primitive' was at once reviled and romanticized, especially by Romantic artists fascinated with the taboo and the exotic, and philosophers swayed by the image of the unfettered Noble Savage.
While a more culturally relativist anthropology has sought to cleanse the perjorative ideas associated with 'primitivism,' preferring to describe idiographically rather than evolutionarily the less 'advanced,' pre-modern, indigenous societies of the planet, the notion of the "primitive" remained a powerful one in Western culture, which internalized representations of "primitives" from both within (the Native Americans) and without (Oceanians, Africans, etc.) To many people within Western civilization's orbit, (which increasingly encompasses the entire planet), the "primitive" still signifies a premodern, "untainted" alternative to industrialization, capitalism, and the European Enlightenment. It represents a preferred "Golden Age" past, of things left aside in the march of "progress", to which might be juxtaposed a dystopian technological future.
And, then, of course, there is modernity. What it means to be a modern is still being argued about, as well as whether we have left the condition of modernity behind. If anything, modernity was probably the vision that the future would be radically different (and most likely better) than the present. Certainly, in the arts, modernity was associated with Futurism, involving a penchant for action, speed, power, abstraction, and change, as well as other movements in the avant-garde - Surrealism, Dadaism, Expressionism, etc. Modernity basically meant experimentation to many people; a refusal to be fettered by conventions of the past, and a demand to shock the morals and traditions of the bourgeouisie. New territories - the unconscious mind, for example - were being opened to investigation and creation.
Postmodernism, if anything, is in essence a combination of modernity and the premodern - a genre blurring of the abandoned and the untried. In a world where the old (tradition, superstition, folk beliefs, etc.) is increasingly being abandoned, there can be nothing more new and avant-garde then to reintroduce it once more... thus the ironic state of postmodernity. There can be no more postmodern movement than that of the "modern primitives," determined to follow the simultaneous tracks of the past and the future toward their inevitable collision. Having at once embraced a mythical "low-tech" past and a mythical "high-tech" future, the "modern primitives" are preeminent denizens of the postmodern, cyclical-time era...
The "modern primitives" like Stelarc and Fakir Mustafar are perhaps best known for their use of body distortion, modification (elongation, coloration, etc.), and piercing. Many moderns were familiar (from visual anthropology) with the practices found in less 'civilized' cultures such as footbinding, elongating the neck or skull, or ritual incision. Body manipulation is not anything alien to modernity, with its use of more antiseptic and clinical plastic surgery, but then neither is tatooing or piercing either. Moderns never gave up the urge to inscribe and mark the body, or to alter and distort its features... indeed, Foucault's biopolitics suggests that a preeminent feature of modernity was the pursuit of unnattainable somatic norms, especially for women. Still, many people see body marking (tatooing) as transgressive, exotic, and 'primitive,' and this is one reason why modern primitivies embrace it as a custom.
What does make the modern primitive movement unusual is its pursuit of sensation. Borrowing from the S & M sexual subculture, the modern primitives suggest that one of the effects of modernization and industrialization has been psychic numbing. People no longer know either authentic pleasure or pain, and have forgotten the curious neurochemical ways in which they are interwoven. Piercing is more than just inscription; piercing of the genitals or other sensitive areas of the body means pain, especially during sexual intercourse... but it is a pain that becomes part of the ecstasy for ModPrims... there is this idea of a knowing through pain which modernity has forgotten.
When Mustafar or Stelarc hang themselves from hooks, or pierce themselves with sharp painful implements, they are only duplicating a practice found all over the world. It is a key ritual for many "primitive" and other societies for the person to go into trance and to demonstrate their "absorbtion" by the divine through the negation of pain and injury. The ModPrims claim that their performances are a pursuit of transcendence, proving the ability of the mind to go beyond the taxings and limitations of the body. Stelarc calls himself a "Cyberhuman," pointing to his belief that the future of human evolution toward a greater interconnection of men and machines will require humankind's mastery over (rather than suppression of) passion, suffering, and pain.
Futher, within the ModPrim movement, there is this sort of obsession over technological invasion of the body, through prosthetics, genetic modification, implants, and so on. This bodily invasion is at once feared (as a colonization by capital) and desired (by permitting people to directly neurally link into the "consensual hallucination" of Gibson's Virtual Reality.) The body is seen as information (DNA provides the 'code') and its invasion as either 'scrambling' (through viruses, cancer, etc.) or 'purification' (by removing 'noise' or 'distortion.') The technological modification of the body is seen as a reworking of the shamanic 'deconstruction' of a past era, where the shaman is torn apart by the gods of his tribe, and then his bones and flesh are replaced with quartz or fire or something else...
The limitations of the body need not be obeyed. It can be made to live longer, or be healthier, through artificial organs and nanotech 'magic bullets.' It can be made stronger and more dextrous through steroids and enhancing nervous signal transmission. The mind can be extended as well, its memory or perceptions or intelligence increased. The "primitive man's" desire to imitate and become like his gods can be met. But ModPrims also know that there is the danger of forgetting the body as well - that in cyberspace, people will no longer be "in tune" with their tangible physicality... thus they push for ways in which the "feedback" from the Matrix will be at once tactile and visual...
ModPrims also embrace the rave as a sign of the uniting of past and future. The rave is at once 'primitive,' with its gathering of 'tribes' of young people for the experience of Levy-Bruhl 'participation mystique' through kinetics and MDMA (Ecstasy), and 'futuristic' (or modern) with its use of digitally sampled and remixed music, laser and light effects, and multimedia expositions. Ravers at once dress in way that signifies past and future - piercing their ears with computer chips, wearing 70s (or earlier) clothes with futuristic hologram jewelry, combining the fashion of folk and punk. They consider themselves the heirs of the 60s counterculture, and also its antithesis, since they reject its anti-technology, pro-natural, 'peace and harmony,' and idealist emphases for a more pragmatist, aggressive, and techno-positive viewpoint... to the raver, whether a drug is synthetic or organic is besides the point.
Besides raves and piercing, ModPrims are perhaps best known for their attempts at juxtaposing magick and science. Publications like Virus 23 juxtapose Crowleyan occultism with chaos theory, Neo-Paganism & Wicca with memetics and information theory, and use of ancient hallucinogens with the latest findings in neuroscience. Shamanism is shown to have a basis in quantum mechanics, and Hermeticism in astrophysical cosmology. Fringe science publications, full of diagrams of Tesla machines, antigravity motors, UFO propulsion systems, free energy devices, perpetual motion machines, and radionic/psychotronic boxes, combine at once the impossible fascinations of past eras with the latest technological principles...
Computer hackers often call themselves "wizards," for good reason. Abstruse computer programs are not all that dissimilar from blasphemous incantations; electrical logic diagrams often look like mystical Tables of Correspondences from olden times; complex systems are inevitably suspect to the interference of unguessable entities variously called "bugs," "glitches," or "gremlins." The technoshaman/computer hacker knows that he is part of an elite whose knowledge is mystifyingly undecipherable to the general public, and that society has placed an almost religious faith in the power of computers to solve the problems of society, from traffic routing and personal communications, to psychiatric diagnosis and aiding athletic performance...
The ModPrims eagerly embrace technoshamans like Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Terrence McKenna, and Jose Arguelles. The I Ching really becomes a computer code, connected to the rhythms of history and the codons of the DNA sequence. The hallucinogenic mushroom really becomes an extraterrestrial colonizing spore, seeking to link human consciousness with its cosmic roots. The use of mystical drugs like LSD really becomes a means to activate normally dormant "circuits" within the "biocomputer" known as the brain, thus making "metaprogramming" possible. Human-animal communication becomes at once a technological duty, and a necessity for realizing the interconnectedness of "Gaia," or the collective identity created by organic life on the planet...
The ModPrims themselves point to the collision of the past and future. Reading McKenna, they point to the cycles of history, and the way in which many linear trends (scientific invention, etc.) are reaching bottleneck points where they may accelerate exponentially (this being thought to be "TimeWave Zero," or the "Omega Point.") The Principia Cybernetica Newsletter advances the idea that the new webs of telecommunications networks are creating a "global brain" in which humans are the individual neurons. Others suggest that the Human Genome project may unlock the means for humanity's next great evolutionary advance. Many ModPrims think that we have passed out of linear, past-to-future, historical time, and entered some other new kind of cyclical time or maybe even the "end of history"...
People interested in materialist analyses of culture wonder whether this efflorescence of modern primitivism, with its explicit rejection of older notions of linear progress and evolution, has anything to do with the changing material basis of culture. Has the fact that we have entered a post-industrial, service/information economy, 'disconnected' from material production because of automation and other forces, similarly 'disconnected' people from the idea of a rational, orderly march of time? Such a sense of time was essential to industrialism, in which time was money and the Puritan criterion beyond all others was time-efficiency, e.g. not 'slacking' or 'wasting time.'
In his book "Time Wars," Jeremy Rifkin suggests that many of the conflicts between groups may have been over competing notions of time. Rifkin sees the conflict of our era as being between 'industrial' time, which is individualistic, atomistic, quantitative, utilitarian, artificial (clock-based), centralized, and mechanistic; and what might be called 'postindustrial' time, which is communitarian, participatory, qualitative, empathetic, rhythmic, cyclical, decentralized, and organic. From the 'industrial' viewpoint, time is a resource for the progressive creation of wealth, which is not to be squandered. Perhaps from the 'postindustrial' viewpoint, time is a resource for human lives and experiences... recognizing entropy, the person living in 'postindustrial' time knows that material 'progress' is not indefinite or without external cost.
I would suggest that the way ModPrims can perhaps best be understood are as people living in a different time-order or time-value-system. This ideological shift is partly due to the transition of people toward a post-industrial economy, where the previous system of linear industrial time no longer makes sense. For them, there is no contradiction between past and future. If time is a circle, then of course past and future are heading toward their point of uniting. In the postmodern world of the ModPrims, the "moderns" have much to learn from the ecological sense of interconnectedness of the "primitives," and vice versa, the "prims" can learn from the experimental sensibility of the "mods." Together, they can perhaps turn the spiral of time back to its point of origin, at a higher level of existence.

Steve Mizrach


http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/cyberanthropos.html

different types of scar tissue & vitamin e

Atrophic

Atrophic scars are sunken, depressed areas of scar tissue. The scar tissue is generally very thin and weak, and blood vessels can be seen very close to the surface. They are caused when insufficient collagen is laid down in the wound. This sort of scar tends to be formed as the result of acne, though some scarification work (especially when no aftercare regime is followed) will result in this sort of scar.

Normal

A wound healed under optimum conditions will form scar tissue that is almost the same colour and thickness as the skin around the wound, and be substantially smaller than the original wound. The body tries to form scars which mimic the tissue around them. A large number of scarification pieces heal like this, most of the people who get scarification work are young and healthy, and consequently their bodies heal wounds very well, even if aftercare techniques are followed. For the first couple of months the scars may be red/purple, but over time they will fade through pink to white, leaving a very subtle effect on pale skinned individuals.

Hypertrophic

Hypertrophic scars are raised scars which do not extend beyond the border of the wound. They are formed when the rate of collagen production in a wound exceeds the rate of collagen breakdown. Unlike keloid scars, the collagen fibers are still aligned evenly within the scar, so the scar will be more even, and less likely to be painful when you move. Hypertrophic scar formation can be encouraged by giving the wound a difficult healing environment, although the predisposition to forming hypertrophic scar tissue is a genetic trait. Hypertrophic scars sometimes form next to piercings, especially on the ear. They often fade in colour and become less raised over time, especially when any irritant (i.e. piece of jewelery) is removed. Wearing high quality, well-fitting jewelery and massaging regularly with Vitamin E oil can help reduce hypertrophic scar tissue around piercings.

Keloid

Keloid scars are large, raised, generally uneven scars that extend beyond the border of the original injury. The word 'keloid' is very commonly misused by individuals who are actually referring to hypertrophic scarring. People with dark skin are much more likely to form keloid scar tissue, especially on the back, shoulders, upper arms, and earlobes. Keloid scars are formed when the rate of collagen production in a wound exceeds the rate of collagen breakdown, and the collagen fibers align themselves in a random pattern (as opposed to in parallel lines as in normal scars). It is not known exactly what triggers the formation of keloid scars, but it is thought that the wound healing factors mentioned above can influence keloid formation. Keloid scars tend to increase in size over time. Keloids also occasionally form next to piercings, and while removing the jewelery and rubbing with Vitamin E oil may help, it is likely that a medical professional will have to assist with their removal, either by steriod injections or surgically

Vitamin E Oil

Vitamin E is a fat soluble vitamin which is found naturally in certain vegetable oils and other foods (for example: germ oil, nuts and seeds, whole grains, egg yolks and leafy greens). It is an antioxidant that protects your body’s cell membranes and other fat soluble parts of the body, and a necessary constituent of a healthy diet. Vitamin E oil has shown to penetrate the dermis. It is able to reduce the formation of oxygen radicals that impede healing. Vitamin E also stabilizes collagen production.

Vitamin E oil is renowned for its healing properties; it is an excellent moisturizer, and it can help reduce unwanted scar tissue. It's commonly used to lubricate organic plugs to help keep stretched ear piercings healthy. It can be purchased in bottles, or in capsules each containing a small amount of oil.

Why piercing guns are dangerous

Piercing guns are a common tool used in mall shops, mall kiosks, beauty salons and by other non-professional piercers. Unfortunately, the piercing gun or stud gun is an inferior piece of equipment that can cause unnecessary damage and increase a piercees risk of complications.

Sterilization

All equipment used in any piercing must be properly sterilized between uses to prevent the spread of blood borne diseases and reduce the chance of infection. To be properly sterilized, equipment must be run through an autoclave. Piercing guns cannot be autoclaved. When a piercing is performed with a gun, tissue and blood become airborne and will come into contact with anything near it, including the gun, the piercer and the person being pierced. Wiping a piercing gun with antiseptic wipes or alcohol swabs between uses is not sufficient, as it will not kill all blood borne pathogens. This means that both the piercer and person being pierced are exposed to the tissue and blood of every other person that has been pierced with that equipment. In addition, the new piercing has come into contact with the dirty gun and all of the bacteria on it. This greatly increases the risk of infection. This risk of infection is of even more concern when applied to cartilage piercings. Infections in cartilage can become trapped between the layers of cartilage and cause deformation of the ear, sometimes requiring surgery.

clean adj. - Free from dirt, stain, or impurities; unsoiled.
ster·ile  adj.  - Completely free from live bacteria or other microorganisms.


Stud vs. Needle
A properly done piercing is performed using a hollow needle that is extremely sharp. It has a beveled edge that creates a very neat, clean slice in the tissue. This leaves the area with very little damage or trauma, allowing for the easiest healing and minimal complications as well as less pain for a shorter period of time.

A piercing gun uses a dull stud that is forced through the ear through sheer force. Look closely at the end of a piercing stud and it is obvious just how dull it is. Remember that you can sleep on these studs without cutting your neck. Because the stud is dull, it rips through the tissue, causing major tearing, trauma and compaction in the tissue. This will lead to a longer healing time and increased risk of building up excessive scar tissue in and around the piercing. It also causes more irritation and swelling, leading to more pain for an extended period of time.

Excessive scar tissue can cause problems for those that intend to, or decide to stretch their piercings to larger gauges. Some find that it hinders stretching, or even makes it impossible. It will often cause the stretching process to be much slower and involved than normal to allow the scar tissue time to soften and the stretch to heal properly.


Jewelry
The only appropriate materials for use in a fresh piercing are implant grade metals, plastics, glass: Surgical Stainless 316LVM, Titanium, Niobium, PTFE, Bioflex and Pyrex. The nickel content in gold, silver and low grade steel can cause serious reactions and irritation in many people. The porosity of other materials allows the harboring of dirt and bacteria, causing serious irritation and infection. Piercing studs are generally made of a low-grade metal and are often plated. Most common are gold and silver studs.

It is necessary for the jewelry in a new piercing to allow room for swelling and proper access to the piercing for cleaning and to allow the piercing to drain.

Every aspect of the piercing stud makes in inappropriate for use in a new piercing. They are much too short to allow the tissue to swell comfortably. Swelling can be exacerbated
by the restriction of the stud, leading to further damage and irritation of the piercing. The locking butterfly backs cover the back of the piercing and pull the jewelry tight against the front of the piercing. This will not allow a piercing to drain properly as well as building up lymph and dirt and holding it against the healing piercing. Butterfly backs are extremely difficult to clean properly as the loops are very small and cannot be accessed easily.

Proper Placement and Similar Concerns on Body Parts Other Than Ears
When the piercing gun is used, it visually blocks the person operating it from seeing exactly where the stud is being placed. This, along with minimal training on the part of the person using the gun and the kickback of the gun often leaves poorly placed piercings. This also means that matched piercings are often not symmetrical. Many people are left with a no-win situation. Take out the piercing and have it done re-done to correct the placement or live with an improperly placed piercing. This may not be an immediate concern for some, but those wanting to stretch to larger gauges later may find that any asymmetry becomes more pronounced at the larger gauges.

In less common cases, "piercers" will use the gun to perform other piercings, such as in the navel, nose and even tongue. The gun was designed for use on the ears and cannot accommodate other body parts. The design does not allow a larger amount of tissue to be placed in it and the short jewelry is even more dangerous on the thicker piercings.

The width of a gun stud cartridge makes in impossible for it to be fully inserted into the nostril. This leaves the piercing too far forward on the nostril. While being aesthetically unappealing, it also makes it difficult or impossible to wear a ring or nose screw comfortably. A screw will tend to hang out of the nose because it cannot be turned around properly and a ring will stick out from the nostril.


Trained Piercers vs. Minimally Trained Gun Operators
A professional piercer must apprentice under a trained profession. This training includes classes in blood borne pathogens and cross contamination, as well as first aid. This prepares a piercer to handle any situation that may arise during a piercing procedure as well being able to accurately assess a person and any possible complications. They also understand all possible complications and can assist a client with the correct solution to a problem.

The majority of piercings performed with a piercing gun happen in mall shops and/or kiosks, and beauty salons. The people using these guns receive minimal training on the use of the equipment and no training whatsoever on human anatomy, the proper care for a new piercing or the risks and complications involved with piercings or how to treat them. Generally, training consists of two weeks of instruction on use of the gun and possibly practice on a teddy bear or foam ear. The trainee is then loosed on the general public with minimal knowledge and no experience whatsoever.

Piercing guns can jam while being used, leaving the piercee with a half embedded stud and most likely a piercing gun stuck to it. This can be very painful for the piercee and someone that is not properly prepared to deal with this situation can cause unnecessary pain and extended damage to the piercing.

The lack of proper training leads back to the inability of a piercing gun operator to prevent the spread of blood borne diseases, as they are not aware of the risks or the precautions that need to be taken. They also open themselves to exposure, as most do not wear gloves.

Should any serious complications arise, a piercing gun operator will not be able to help you. With little experience in body piercings, they are unable to identify or offer guidance on problems that may arise.

Environment
A piercing or tattoo shop is a safe, clean environment with trained staff. To ensure the safety and comfort of a client, piercings are performed in a room specifically set up for piercing. This means that all of the tools and equipment are within easy reach, as well as any medical equipment that may be needed in case of an unforeseen problem. The area is kept extremely clean, there is a Sharps Container for used needles to be disposed of in and equipment is cleaned in a separate area. All of these things greatly reduce the risk of contamination from the piercer or a previous client.

Mall kiosks and stores are not closed off from the public. In fact, if it is a store, they typically keep the piercing booth right at the front. Equipment is not kept in a sanitary manner nor is the area in which a person is pierced. The open-air environment of a mall means that you are exposed to many more germs and bacteria than the controlled environment of a piercing studio. Should any problems arise, such as unexpected bleeding, you will most likely get an unsanitary paper towel to hold to your ear. Used gun cartridges are tossed in a trash basket, further increasing the chances of spreading disease.


For a safe piercing experience, please choose a professional piercer that works in a proper piercing or tattoo shop and uses the correct equipment and jewelry. Your piercings will thank you!