Ears of Rebellion: How Piercings went from Punk to Pretty The only thing I wanted for my thirteenth birthday was a second piercing. I was finally a teenager, and I fervently begged my hesitant mom to let me have another hole in each ear. Her worries: the second hole was too edgy, too rebellious, all leading to denying my request. But with calculated imploring and a short trip to the mall, I finally got pierced! My total of four piercings made me feel older, cooler, and ready to take on the challenges my teenage years would bring. Today, I pick out my earrings just like an outfit: with six piercings in total, I get to express myself through my ears. But where did this idea come from? That having holes and studs on my body would somehow have social currency or even just desire? Multiple piercings make us feel radical, but why? In my research to answer this question, I found that piercings were incorporated into the mainstream from punk subculture of the 1970s-1990s. Male and female pun
Sagging: Stolen Artifact or a New $1,200 trend The appropriation of black culture is especially prominent in the fashion industry, where products have been commercialized and brought into mainstream culture. This being said, a specific product that has recently been commercialized is sagging. Sagging is simply wearing your pants low enough to where parts of your underwear can be noticeably seen, and is especially prominent in lower income people of color communities. Sagging is merely a cool fashion statement for people in these communities. The origins of sagging are often debated one whether it came from slavery or prison. The slavery origin states that black men that were raped by their slave masters were forced to wear their sagging pants so their masters could then recognize them in the future and do it again (Stillman, n.d. as cited in Deveaux). The more known history of sagging is that it was created as a result of prisons banning belts and shoelaces because they were afraid th