Temptation to Stretch

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Originally written on May 31, 2012

Right now I have 4 piercings (2 in each ear). My primary lobe piercings are stretched to 8 gauge (8g). My secondary lobe piercings are 14g.

I started out like many girls do, getting my ears pierced with a piercing gun by a teenage employee in some shop. In my case, it was a hair salon in the small town I grew up in. I was 11 or 12 when I had it done. Later, around age 16, I got the desire to get second holes in my ears, but couldn't afford it. I split the cost with a friend and we each got one ear done. So then I had one earring in my right ear, and two in my left.

I loved my second piercing, but it gave me so much trouble. It was always getting infected and never seemed to heal right. So I let it close over.

Fast forward a few years, and I found myself being given earrings that would not fit! I didn't know what to do. I had never heard of earring gauges, or of stretching piercings. The Internet wasn't big back then either, so the thought of searching about what to do did not cross my mind.

Now, what I decided to do was bad, so I am preceding it with the familiar statement: Don't try this at home! Or anywhere, really. I took a bunch of thin sewing needles and, one by one, inserted them through my ear holes, blunt end first. I did this over several hours, but none the less, it did hurt a little by the end. I kept placing the end of the earring post over the needle tips until the fit was correct. I doused my ears in rubbing alcohol and pushed the earring posts against the needle tips. As the posts went through my ears, they pushed the sewing needles out the back. It worked! I was wearing the new earrings (they were Indian earrings, from my mother in law). 

Below is a photo comparison of a 20g earring and a 14g Indian earring.

I had to leave the new 14g earrings in for a long time. Even so, the holes would not accept me just pushing those blunt posts through (the posts were hollow and internally threaded, and the backs screwed into the posts). I had to cut little pointed tips out of plastic water bottle lids to insert in the posts to get the earrings in. After several years like that, my ears started getting irritated.  Possibly because I sometimes got lazy about using the plastic tips, and a couple of the earrings were slightly larger, approximately 13g.  I remember one day, after forcing in the 13g earrings, one of my friends pointed out that my ears looked red and swollen.

Then one day I was reading a forum page about piercings, and I was introduced to the concept of stretching, and of wearing earrings of different gauges. I learned that I had been wearing 20g and 18g earrings years ago, and that most of my Indian earrings are 14g. I decided to do something different. I decided to stretch my ears to 8g. I did it, again wrong, but not as wrong as I could have. I used pincers, and slowly inserted them over days until the centers (the fullest part) were in my ears. I would then leave them, held in place with tiny o-rings, until I felt they were healed, and move on to the next size. It was a very pain-free way to do it, but I did not really give myself the healing time between sizes that I should have. I also should not have used pincers. The proper way to move up in size is to do it (one size at a time, no skipping) with tapers and plugs (or by wrapping plugs with PFTE tape or Bondage tape a little at a time to slowly increase the size). 

About a year after I was comfortably at 8g, I began to miss my old second hole. So I went to get seconds done again. This time I did it right. I researched and found a good professional piercer. I was too scared to get pierced at 14g (what the piercer recommended), and had it done at 16g instead. The best way- with a needle.

In the end my piercer was right. I did like 14g better, so a few months after my seconds were healed, I stretched them to 14g.

My problem now is that I am itching for something bigger than 8g. 8g looks too small for the fat fleshiness of my earlobes. But then, I have so much amazing 8g jewelry, I would then have to stretch my seconds to 8g, which tempts me to go for third holes in my lobes (yes, there's just enough room for thirds, well spaced, before I hit cartilage). If I did that I would get it pierced straight to 14g this time.

So there is my problem. I am being lured by temptation. 

:)