However, the male earring would go out of vogue for centuries afterwards, and only reappear in the 20th century, sometimes as an indication of sexuality among gay men. The New York Times reported in the s and early '90s that right-ear piercings were meant to be a way for gay men to signal their sexuality — though it remains up for debate how widespread this signaling was. Here's an historical puzzler: did women in the 19th century really go in for nipple piercings? The answer appears to be, well, yes.
While some historians have slightly overstated the case it wasn't a general fashion trend that everybody and their sister went for , there seems to have been an enthusiastic embrace of the idea of nipple piercings among the demi-monde in Parisian society in the s — they were apparently referred to as anneaux de sein.
The show Outlander features nipple piercings on a mistress of the French king at Versailles. There is a legend that Victorian-era doctors actually recommended this to women as a way of easing pain during breastfeeding , but nobody has actually found any evidence of this though it sure would be fun if it was true!
Nose and septum rings have had an extraordinarily long life; they existed in both ancient African and Mesoamerican civilizations, were mentioned in the Bible , and remain part of the dowry and divorce settlements of the Bedouin nomadic people. They came to India in the s, and spread to America in the '60s as hippies returned from their journeys to Indian ashrams. But nose rings actually turned up in American society a lot earlier — and all because of a French songstress with a pet pig.
The singer Polaire — who at one point had one of the world's smallest waists at inches in a corset , marketed herself as "the ugliest woman in the world", and was beloved of French painters like Toulouse-Lautrec — brought herself, her pet pig named Mimi and her nose piercing to America in to do a tour. Polaire's nose piercing was seen as another mark of flamboyance, but people did take notice.
However, it's likely none of them guessed that a century later, people would be getting the same piercing not to telegraph their extreme eccentricity, but to look cooler on Instagram they also probably wouldn't have guessed about the existence of Instagram. Or the internet. In fact, it was an orientalist fascination with Indian women that catalysed the prevalence of nose piercings in the west.
It began with a French performer named Mademoiselle Polaire. Fast-forward to the s, India was now independent, free-love was flowing in the west and young hippies began globe-trotting. But the practice was still inextricably stuck to subcultures and procedures were mostly taking place underground. In , that all changed. It was to be these groups and the punk community who would also make up the first clientele.
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. There were examples of septum piercings among warrior cultures in New Guinea as well as Solomon Island.
In these cultures, the warriors would wear tusks through the septum in order to appear more intimidating and fierce to enemies. Another common piercing across history is the nose piercing. Most notably, nose piercings were especially popular in the 15th or 16th century in India. Regardless of the historical context, it is important to note that the art of the body piercing as body modification is nothing new. Ear piercing shops began gaining popularity around the 80s, and by the 90s, fewer people had reservations about getting their ears pierced.
Today almost every country and culture have people who wear earrings, mostly for adornment purposes. Piercing of the ear has evolved so much so that different parts of the ear can be pierced. Types of piercing include the standard piercing; which is done on the earlobe. Daith piercing, conch piercing, tragus piercing, industrial piercing; usually done on both parts of the top of the ears, for barbells to be inserted, and rook piercing.
An individual can have more than twenty different piercings on the ear because almost every part of the ear can be pierced.
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