Hot Fashion Trends For Winter. Fashion Trends For Spring Add Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Forgot password? Piercings also carry a great deal of cultural meaning in many civilizations which is why they are such a prominent topic in conversations about cultural appropriation ; for instance, the tradition of piercing the left nostril in India to help with menstrual pain in women dates back centuries, while various African cultures still utilize traditional piercing practices.
In short, anything you do to your body with a piercing needle has an incredibly long and complex history — and it's important to remember that. The history of piercing goes far beyond belly jewelry and the occasional lip ring.
Ancient Mesoamerican civilizations often had extensive rules regarding who could get pierced where. The Olmec, who resided in Mexico, tended to give men giant plugs in their cheeks, which were to be expanded gradually as they got older though we only have mask evidence for what this actually looked like.
The Aztecs, however, had quite a complex code about who could pierce what and why. Piercings, for Aztec men at least, indicated hierarchy: the placement of the piercing and the material that hung from it showed where you stood in the world.
If you were the king or high nobility, you were permitted to have lip, ear and nose-plugs made of gold and precious stones. Other men were given the opportunity to have plugs of their own, but made of less precious materials like bone; the best bet for getting bigger ones was to show massive military success. For each prisoner of war captured or big battle victory achieved, a man's lip ring would be enlarged a size.
Ancient Romans regarded earrings as pretty normal ornaments , at least for women of means; but there was a particular kind of piercing common among athletes and young male singers or actors of the era that would likely make modern audiences grab their genitalia and groan.
These young men would have their foreskins pulled forward, pierced on either side, and then bound together, in something called preputial infibulation. The idea, according to historians, was to help their health and perhaps preserve the singing voices of young trebles whose voices would, of course, break as they entered puberty by preventing them from having sex. But it was also about modesty — athletes and other public performers were expected to avoid showing their full penis in public at all costs , whether through a leather sheath or via the means of the piercing.
For them, piercings acted as a way to signify affiliation with their communities. It was fitting then, that it was a gay man named Jim Ward, dubbed the grandfather of the modern piercing movement and owner of the Gauntlet , who brought piercing out of the closet.
Throughout the 70s and 80s, subcultures and piercing went hand-in-hand. Nipples, septum, genitals, pretty much every piece of skin you could pinch could now be pierced.
This would set the stage for the 90s, which came to be known as the golden decade of piercing. Now, music was a driving force. In it, Alicia Silverstone not yet famous at the time gets her navel pierced.
But not everybody was on board. But the controversial nature of the practice is also part of what makes it so appealing, especially amongst teenagers. In a post-Aerosmith piercing culture, that club was now made up of supermodel trendsetters like Naomi Campbell, who had her naval and nipples pierced by British piercer, Teena Marie, and pretty much every woman in a music video at the time.
Despite celebrities leading the way, Skellie and King, both piercers at the time, explained there was a sense people were getting pierced for themselves. Genital piercings became popular and boundaries were pushed. But by the s, stigma lessened. The craze started when Christy Turlington stepped onto the runway with a belly button piercing in Naomi Campbell amped up the trend adding a chain belt which linked to her navel ring. Then there was Britney the superstar is becoming a regular in our historical beauty roundups — she secured a mention for her infamous back tat, see here.
The singer spurred a whole revolution — and girls with crop halter tops remember those? Check out this golden interview in of Brit showing her belly bling off on TRL.
Whether we are talking about tattoos or piercings, the chic and tiny trend is hot right now with semi-permanent and permanent body adornments alike.
Ranging from mini golden hoops lining the upper ear or itty bitty chains on the anti-tragus , "It Girl" piercings are found on celebs like Rihanna and Miley pictured above , to models like Catherine McNeil and Daria Werbowy.
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