The other day at the mall i saw a 15 year old sitting in a Claire’s piercing booth and it took every fiber in my being to not just grab her and take her to the actual, clean and sanitary and not guaranteed to fuck up your ears tattoo shop literally next door. Like I was frantic. Snakes manifested in my house
Piercing guns almost ALWAYS cause infections
They hurt more because they jam dull jewelry into your ear
Needles from a professional are designed to allow for minimum damage thus less pain.
The people working there literally have no idea what the fuck they’re doing and just guess it with a 1 hour training video vs a professional who trained under a mentor for at least a year and has a passion in the craft
They use bad metal for healings (copper, silver, etc) that can irritate ears. Surgical grade steel should be the only thing in your healing piercings
They put them on way to tight, causing swelling issues. Swelling is normal and piercings should be large enough to allow for that
They give you shit aftercare advice and cleaner (literally just buy saline solution at Spencer’s or hot topic for 8 dollars at the most and don’t touch them at all)
If done on cartilage it can LITERALLY SHATTER YOUR EARS
Please if any young girls in your family want their ears pierced take them to actual professional and don’t trust piercing guns. If a professional says your kid is too young (I.e a fucking baby) then trust their professional judgement. It costs more but you are getting essentially a art piece from a highly trained professional who knows what they’re doing vs a part time min wage employee who had 1 hour training on how to pierce ears.
I literally wrote an entire essay in college why piercing guns should be banned with pictures and my professor told me she was so interested in my topic and had no idea and even googled the topic herself out of curiosity and was horrified on the amount of damage they case
I am a licensed piercing professional and this is all sound and accurate advice. Get your piercings done by a licensed professional at a reputable shop. Not at the mall kiosk that uses piercing guns. Not by your friend who ordered a kit off of Amazon.
Association of Professional Piercers Aftercare Guide:
It’s funny, because I can tell all of this is true, and yet, to me Claire’s was such a step up from my first piercing experience.
My mom was certain any piercing place was going to give me AIDS or some such, so she insisted on taking me to the doctor’s office to get my ears pierced.
He didn’t have a piercing needle OR a piercing gun. He had these little individually wrapped plastic things that you pinched the (extremely cheap quality) earrings on with.
He also clearly thought the whole thing was dumb girl stuff, spent about one minute ‘prepping’, rushed my mom through checking his markings, and put my piercings in lopsided.
My mom, completely flabbergasted by the whole experience, took me to Claire’s to have them redone. The woman there was extremely nice, patient, and careful. The piercing gun hurt way, way less than the finger pinchy things, even on a still healing ear. It was a dramatic improvement.
(I’ve since had my ears pierced by professionals at a tattoo place and yes, that is a further improvement.)
