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 punk rockers and fans donned piercings to express rebellion and reject control. Their piercings were often DIY, using sewing needles or safety pins to pierce through their skin. Though unsanitary, and thus dangerous, this made piercings into further acts of rebellion (Bazinet, 2017). Drawing on Adorno and Horkheimer’s concept of incorporation from the Dialectic of Enlightenment, it is no surprise that piercings became mainstream. They write: “anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in” (Adorno, 1941, p. 198). This rings true for Maria Tash, a jewelry designer who was once a member of punk subculture. Though, in order to survive she saw an opportunity to bring the counter-cultural trend of piercings to a new and specific group that she wanted to fit into: wealthy manhattanites.
Tash implemented the “Subcultural Market Doctrine”, a concept by Devon Powers from her book On Trend: The Business of Forecasting the Future (2019) that describes the way in which the novel lifestyles, tastes, and fashions of a subculture become a new trend within the mainstream. Suddenly, the punk rockers were the leaders of the exact market they ran away from, the mainstream. However, in order to successfully appeal to this market, Tash had to refine her product. In 1993 she opened her first piercing studio in Manhattan’s East Village, though she importantly noted that it was instead a piercing spa. Tash knew she needed to ease the market into the unfamiliar subculture of piercings and decided the “spa” would add a high-end flair. She also transitioned the concept from heavy and industrial style metals to dainty metals and laser cut diamonds (Denman, 2021). Her incorporation of the punk trend into the mainstream was successful as celebrities such as Beyoncé and Gwyneth Paltrow took to her services (Maria Tash, 2022), however she stripped the punk subculture of their unique ritual and “oppositional language” along the way (Fiske, 2010). The ears that Tash is producing should be described as the opposite of punk, as their mainstream trendiness stands for everything the punk subculture was against.
A practice that was once accessible to anyone with a sewing needle was transformed into a trend for the elite and high-class. The “ear” that Maria Tash markets cost upwards of $1000, and thus excluding everyone except the elite from partaking in the trend. The only other options for piercings throughout the last three decades, seemed to be Claire's, a tweens commonplace often found in malls, or tattoo parlors too intimidating for the passerby. This gap in the market led Anna Harman and Lisa Bubbers to founding Studs in 2019. Studs is a new piercing studio that created a more affordable and accessible way to get pierced. The brand is shocking the industry as they cater to female millennials, and Gen-Z alike, helping customers achieve the taste of rebellion and edge they come in craving (Walpow, 2021). Within three years, Studs has opened 17 studios in 10 different states, and their work is successfully sharing the art of piercing with the mainstream (Studs, 2022). However, this trend continues to be highly exclusionary, as men who once were a staple in the Punk piercing world, have been erased from the trend. Additionally, a high degree of wealth is still required to afford the options on the market.
The product of the piercing trend is the “curated ear”, a term coined by Maria Tash. As an Instagram hashtag, it now garners over 170,000 posts (Instagram, 2022). Every post is an example of Adorno and Horkheimer’s (1941) concept of “pseudo-individuality”. This concept describes how there is a “halo of free choice or open market on the basis of standardization itself” (Adorno, 1941, p. 203). Each post describes consumers’ feeling that their earring design is unique, curated, and rebellious. Yet, all these earrings are almost identical and just slight variations in dainty gold and diamond studs or hoops. Companies like Maria Tash and Studs encourage consumers to purchase more and more earrings to form more perfect and individualized ears.
Though I am undeniably one with the mainstream, piercing has given me a false sense of deviance. Deciding what earrings to wear everyday has provided me with little thrills of rebellion, but it is essential to understand the roots of the practice and the way in which it was poached and altered into the mainstream.
References
Adorno , T., Horkheimer, M., & Blunden, A. (1944). The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as
Mass Deception. In Dialectic of Enlightenment. essay.
Denman, S. (2021, May 11). The art of adornment: How Maria Tash revolutionized the luxury
piercing industry. The National. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from
https://www.thenationalnews.com/lifestyle/luxury/
Fiske, J. (2011). Fiske on Jeans. In Understanding popular culture (pp. 1–21). , Routledge.
Powers, D. (2020). Coolhunting. In On trend: The business of forecasting the future (pp.
58–72). essay, University of Illinois Press.
Taylor Bazinet (2017, April 28). Punk subculture & the fashion movement. Taylor Bazinet.
Retrieved December 4, 2022, from
https://taylorbazinet.com/punk-subculture-its-fashion-movement/
Wolpow, N. (2022, April 21). Studs raises $20 million to be gen Z's hipper answer to piercing
chain Claire's. Forbes. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninawolpow/
by Ekaterina Vinnik
ReplyDeleteDear Sophia,
I deeply enjoyed your discussion on piercings and their origin. You did a great job connecting the topic to Adorno and Horkheimer’s reading and their concept on incorporation, which happens to be one of my concepts and readings from this class because of how relatable I think it is to mainstream and pop culture. While reading your blog post, I realized that as a child, I had a different experience than you. In the country where I am from, it is culturally appropriate and even encouraged for girls to get their ears pierced before they turn 2 years old. It is considered that, this way, the child feels less pain and it will make the girl look more “beautiful” from a young age. This “tradition” reminds me of Hall’s discussion on stereotypes. A classical stereotyped representation of a little girl from my country consists of a girl that wears tiny earrings from a very young age. In The "Spectacle of Other", Hall mentions that an image can “carry more than one meaning” and only when seeing the bigger picture, or the context one is able to understand and interpret the image correctly (Hall, 1997, p. 228). I think earrings and piercings can carry more than one meaning, depending on multiple factors such as the time period, the individual that wears them and their age. As you mentioned, pierced ears used to be represented and thought of as something rather extraordinary and radical. This reminds me of Hall’s concept of regime of representation, as it is because that earrings were represented by punk rockers and it created the assumption that they are rebellious (Hall, 1997).
It is very interesting to see the contrast between how pierced ears on young girls in my culture can be perceived as feminine and completely ordinary, while in other places it can be considered “radical” and rebellious. I really liked your discussion and the most interesting part was when you mentioned the “curated ear”. This made me think of the discussion we had in class about RomComs - they all seem to be different and unique, yet they all have the same predictable endings.
- Ekaterina Vinnik
Hi Sophia,
DeleteI really enjoyed this blog post, as I was previously unaware of all the rich history behind ear piercings! I know that people have been wearing earrings since ancient times, but it’s interesting that ear piercings as we know them, or “curated ears”, have their origin in punk subculture. Your post reminded me a lot of the reading by John Fiske that we read in class on jeans, because in a similar way, jeans came from rebellious subculture and have been accepted into the mainstream, even more so than ear piercings. Originally, jeans, especially ripped ones were homemade by mostly youth trying to seem rebellious and defy social norms, but soon, ripped jeans were commoditized and sold by large corporations, sometimes for very high prices, just as ear piercings were when they were originally incorporated into mainstream culture.
Now, jeans are not seen as “belonging to” any one group, rather they are an article of clothing that “deny social differences” (page 2). John Fiske comments on how disfiguring jeans may be symbolic of a distancing from contemporary American values, but “such a distancing is not a complete rejection”, because at the end of the day, ripped jeans are largely mainstream now. Similarly, getting an ear piercing, especially multiple, is seen as somewhat “edgy” or “rebellious”, but personally most people I know have at least two ear piercings on each lobe, making them “rebellious” but not so much a rejection of societal values anymore. Ear piercings have also been commoditized, but now they are more affordable for all, which I think is a good thing.
Hi Sophia,
DeleteI really enjoyed this blog post, as I was previously unaware of all the rich history behind ear piercings! I know that people have been wearing earrings since ancient times, but it’s interesting that ear piercings as we know them, or “curated ears”, have their origin in punk subculture. Your post reminded me a lot of the reading by John Fiske that we read in class on jeans, because in a similar way, jeans came from rebellious subculture and have been accepted into the mainstream, even more so than ear piercings. Originally, jeans, especially ripped ones were homemade by mostly youth trying to seem rebellious and defy social norms, but soon, ripped jeans were commoditized and sold by large corporations, sometimes for very high prices, just as ear piercings were when they were originally incorporated into mainstream culture.
Now, jeans are not seen as “belonging to” any one group, rather they are an article of clothing that “deny social differences” (page 2). John Fiske comments on how disfiguring jeans may be symbolic of a distancing from contemporary American values, but “such a distancing is not a complete rejection”, because at the end of the day, ripped jeans are largely mainstream now. Similarly, getting an ear piercing, especially multiple, is seen as somewhat “edgy” or “rebellious”, but personally most people I know have at least two ear piercings on each lobe, making them “rebellious” but not so much a rejection of societal values anymore. Ear piercings have also been commoditized, but now they are more affordable for all, which I think is a good thing.
-Isabella DiCampli
By Gabriel Jung
ReplyDeleteThe cultural significance and history that piercings and many other body alterations have are absolutely interesting subjects to divulge. In my personal experience, there has been a significant stigma behind piercings specifically. With people saying that you wouldn't be able to get a job or would appear disorderly, the negative connotation surrounding piercings definitely pushes it to the margins. However, I think piercings have a similar history as jeans do in John Fiske's publication. Something that people had initially used as a way to separate themselves from the center is then consumed and commercialized by it. Even now we can see big brands like H&M and TJ Maxx commercialize piercings by providing services for them. Also, jewelry brands have begun to expand their collections to include more than just earrings, with nose rings, studs, and several other products now on the mainstream market. What used to be seen as a symbol of rebellion and detachment from the status quo is essentially now absorbed into it and become a main part of the status quo. It also goes to show the reevaluation of class that has also occurred. With piercings initially seen as disorderly, low-income, and minority based, now the mainstream market commercializes it with products that range up to hundreds of dollars. Let alone if we consider the history of piercings ages back further than even the Native Americans and Ancient Egypt. It's interesting to see how something with so much history and substantial stigma was yet again and not surprisingly absorbed into the mainstream culture industry and commercialized.