Baby exploitation
Denny joined Miles and me for Book Babies at the library on Friday. It was lots of fun. We sang songs and listened to the leader read books and danced. There were some super-cute kids there. One thing caught my attention, though. There was one really adorable little girl who I think would have been more adorable if she didn’t have pierced ears.
Piercing an infant’s ears is such a bizarre thing to do. For one thing, it hurts. I remember getting mine done at the mall when I was 9 or 10, at a place called Jewelry Hut (I swear). After I got the first ear done, I wasn’t so sure I wanted the second one. And I remember the aftermath being a giant pain. My earring holes got all crusty and painful and gross, and my mom had to swab them with alcohol every night. I hear that if you get it done by an actual piercing specialist with a needle, it’s not as traumatic to the tissues as with an earring gun, but it was guns all around at Jewelry Hut.
I was a pretty responsible kid, even. I don’t know how you would keep a baby from grabbing at her earrings and getting them all infected, or how the parent would effectively keep them clean. It’s all I can do to keep Miles’s fingernails under an inch long, he’s so wiggly; it must be a hundred times worse when the kid is wiggling away because the process is actually painful.
It just creeps me out to perform a painful cosmetic procedure on a baby for no reason other the parents’ entertainment. It’s different when the kid is old enough to grasp the concept and request it—I’m not casting any aspersions on people in that situation, and it was fun having pierced ears in the 80’s when I got to amass a giant earring collection (both giant in terms of numbers and in item size; after all, the earrings had to be proportionate to the bangs). I don’t know if it’s a gender identity thing or what. Are parents so worried that people will think their little girl is a little boy that they have to stab through her flesh to prove her femininity to strangers? People think Miles is a girl all the time. Just today he was wearing a blue shirt with brown trim and a lion on it, and a person in a restaurant called him she. It doesn’t really concern me.
I shouldn’t be too critical, though. I did, in fact, order a Halloween costume for Miles that he will probably not like wearing. But I don’t think it will cause him any physical tissue damage, unless he looks so cute that I actually munch him.
Pictures forthcoming, of course, so that he may be exploited by all of you as well.
Bleh, piercing babies’ ears is gross and weird. I mean, think about putting makeup on a baby or having it wear a wig – that’s weird and it’s not even punching holes in their bodies. Let babies be babies.
Do you know there are saucy little high heel shoes for girl babies? Whyyyy…
Hmmmm. This is difficult for me. We did pierce Daphne’s ears when she was four. She now has some odd thing about people not touching her ears. It did take two sessions to pierce both ears, because after the first ear she screamed the scream of a child betrayed by parents who told her it would only hurt a little bit.
In our defense, she did want them pierced. One of her friends at pre-school got her ears pierced and it was all the rage.
I wouldn’t do it to a baby. I think it should be the child’s choice. But, maybe a four-year-old doesn’t really know what they want.
I’ve noticed this a lot more frequently in Latino children, and I wonder what accounts for the cultural difference?
She now has some odd thing about people not touching her ears.
Odd? I bet I can figure it out!
Thinking of Ava’s recent four shots at the doctor’s office, I suspect she might be more willing to go under the needle if she knew there were something more than Band Aids at the end of the ordeal. Which doesn’t mean we’d ever pierce her ears. She’s free to do whatever she wants when she moves out of the house.
Holly, I actually meant you among the people upon whom I was not casting aspersions. If any kid is smart enough to grasp the concept of ear piercing, it’s Daphne. That’s totally different from doing it to a baby.
I let Sayali have hers done when she asked at 3. She didn’t really think it was a big deal. she cried for like a minute and I was like uh, you wanted this. and then she was pleased to have pink sparkly things in her ears.
Map, lots of Indian children have it done at a very young age, too; I think mine were pierced when I was around 2. I’m told it was easy-peasy – then again, the parent-child relationship in many cultures is not as egalitarian as it is here. I think the parents figured, “She’ll probably want it at some time, so let’s just do it now.” I also know if you go back far enough, there are lots of traditions/superstitions involving the “feminizing” of an infant to protect it from ethereal baby-stealers. My relatives (in India) dolled up my boy cousin as a girl quite regularly until he was 4 or 5.
piercing baby ears = ridiculous unless it’s a cultural thing. and if robin asked at 4?? i’d say no because UM, SHE’S 4. no unnatural body holes until at least 9 bc that’s when my sister was allowed to get them.