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Piercings in the face - backgrounds, styles and execution
In the ancient cultures, such face piercings served religious purposes: the Mayans, for example, pierced their tongue (and their penis) to offer the gods a self-sacrifice. On the other hand, it marked the status, a period of life, possession or belonging to a group.
contents
- lip plate
- labrets
- Status and gender
- Western face piercings in the modern age
- Which piercing for whom??
- Piercing in the eye area
- Shapes of nose piercings
- Possibilities for piercings in the mouth area
- Piercing on tongue and tongue tapes
- cheek piercing
- To the chin
- Possible further face piercings
lip plate
The Mursi of Ethiopia cut their lower lip and continue to stretch it by using clay plates. After a few years, they can use a saucer the size of a saucer. In western eyes, this looks like a blemish on the lower lip. Some historians even see this as the original purpose. Ethiopia was an important hunting ground for Arab slave traders, who sought out local women for their beauty in order to sell them as sex slaves. The extensive holes in the lower lips made the potential victims for slave slaughter worthless, so the thesis.
During puberty, the Mursi people in Ethiopia have their lower lip cut open and gradually stretched by using ever larger clay clay plates. (Image: hecke71 / fotolia.com) This origin can not be proven, however, for the Mursi today is the size of the lip of a woman's face as an expression of beauty - the larger the lip of the plate, the more sought after is the wearer.
In Ethiopia, the Kichepo and Surma Tellerlippen, in Mozambique and Tanzania the Makonde, in Chad the Sara.
labrets
In the Zo'é on the Amazon anthropologists assume a similar origin as in Ethiopia. Here, too, the widened lips of the women served to make them unattractive to the hostile neighboring tribes.
That would be logical. The local indigenous people traditionally lived in small groups, and female robbery was part of everyday life. However, in the case of the Zo'é, the lipsticks made of light-colored wood have long been an ideal of beauty and, above all, they define belonging to the tribe.
A practical purpose had the large wooden rods of the Zo'é not - on the contrary. They regularly lead to bone deformities of the jaw, and the wearer and wearer must bite their food with the molars.
Other ethnic groups in South America wearing lipsticks are the Botokudo, Suya and Kayapo in Brazil.
Lips are already known from the Stone Age of northwestern America. Indigenous people used materials such as bone, ivory, stones or metals, which they pushed through a pierced hole in the lower lip. The Aztecs used lipsticks made of gold, the Inuit combined with tattoos.
The difference to the Lippentellern lies in the emphasis of the jewelry: not the size of the hole decides, as with the Mursi, but the pin, which is clearly visible on the chin. Similar pegs are indigenous cultures through nasal septum or earlobes.
Status and gender
The Tlingt in western Canada defined the status of women with lipsticks. They buried pubescent girls' lower lip with copper wire, then isolated them for a while in a hut. At marriage, the women received a wooden stake, which they pushed into the branch canal; they then continued to expand the canal, and the older they got, the bigger the pegs became.
The lip peg and its size thus marked both the sex as well as sexual maturity and age. Men, on the other hand, wore top-lip and bearded beards to express their masculinity.
In the 1970s and 80s, the right-sided wearing of earrings in males was interpreted by many as a "hallmark" for homosexuality. (Image: biker3 / fotolia.com) Western face piercings in the modern age
Earrings have long been established in Western societies in women, and in men after all for several decades. Before they became commonplace in everyday life, they were like tattoos a mark of sailors. These each time struck a new earring when they crossed the equator.
Until the 1980s, facial piercings in Germany in men were largely confined to jewelery worn on the ear. Most common were plugs in the left ear, in northern Germany were, for whatever reason, earrings in the right ear in men as a hallmark of homosexuals.
Jewelry in the nostrils was still unusual 40 years ago and was primarily popular with the subculture of punk. Here also other parts of the face spread like pierced cheeks and lips, usually unprofessional. Noticeable were safety pins in earlobes, nostrils and cheeks.
Unlike piercing trends in the mainstream today, it was about anti-aesthetics, an emphasis on ugliness, about shocking society.
Which piercing for whom??
No body area offers as many places for possible piercings as the face. They range from eyebrow and eyelid to chin and lower lip, to lips, tongue and cheeks, from the nostrils to the nasal septum and the bridge of the nose.
The attachment of jewelry in various places on the face is not only common in a counterculture, but in a variety of types. Whether and which piercing fits a human being can only be decided individually. For example, it could be said roughly that a plug in the nostril is especially a person with a small nose and oval face and someone with a big prong should not also attach a thick gold ring, but also the lifestyle plays into it.
A piercing in the eyebrow should definitely be stung in a professional studio. Otherwise, nerve pains or even paralysis of the face may occur due to the nerve tracts that have developed here. (Image: babsi_w / fotolia.com) Piercing in the eye area
Eyebrow piercings can run vertically in the outer third of the brow or horizontally. They heal after about 4 weeks and are suitable for ball closure rings. Beware of self-attempts. Nerve strands run along the eyebrows, and improper stinging can lead to numbness or even paralysis of the face.
Few people can sting over the cheekbones, but it is possible, even if the healing takes several months. An eyelid piercing is associated with complications. The piercer pierces the thin skin on the outer edge of the eyeball. Because we constantly move the eyelids, healing takes a long time.
Shapes of nose piercings
The Austin Bar Piercing is located at the tip of the nose. The puncture canal heals in two to three months; The bridge piercing is located on the nasal bone between the eyes takes up to two months to heal. The nasal piercing pierces the nostrils, nasal septum and the second nostril. It takes about three months for the healing to end.
The rhino piercing is located at the tip of the nose and is directed inwards, the Nostril piercing is much better known. In addition to the piercing of the earlobes, a ring in the nostril is one of the first recognized face piercings.
Possibilities for piercings in the mouth area
The Ashley Piercing is located in the lower lip and lasts for up to six months until it is cured. Inuit piercing, according to the tradition of the Inuit, is to put pegs through the skin below the lower lip. It reaches from below the lower lip to middle lower lip and heals in about a month.
The Jestrum Piercing is located in the middle of the upper lip and takes up to half a year to heal. The lane piercing is also in the lower lip, but horizontal and therefore heals only slowly.
Labret and Lowbret piercing are both below the lower lip, while the Lowbret is very close to the chin.
In the mouth, the Frowny piercing begins, namely between the lips and the lower lip. It heals quickly, sometimes after two weeks. The uvula piercing sits on the uvula. These mouth piercings heal quickly, which is mainly due to the wound healing effect of saliva.
The so-called Labret piercing is stung below the lower lip. (Image: Scott Griessel / fotolia.com) Piercing on tongue and tongue tapes
Tongue piercings are among the more common forms than those that heal most severely. But that's not true. In a regular procedure, the piercer pierces the tongue vertically and then draws a rod with a venous catheter. In the days after, the tongue swells strongly; those affected should eat mostly liquid food and porridge.
As with the other variants in the mouth also applies here: The saliva prevents infections. However, when they form, infections in the tongue are problematic as they interfere with eating and drinking.
A rare variant is the piercing on the tongue ribbon.
cheek piercing
Punks pulled safety pins through the outer cheek skin in the late 1970s. Today's cheek piercings, on the other hand, are bars that run through the cheek from the inside out and close with a ball at each end. A cure lasts up to two months, the carriers should be careful during the first weeks, especially when eating, not to pollute the wound.
The Nick Piercing starts on the inside of the upper lip and emerges from under the eye.
To the chin
The chin piercing sits at the top of the chin. A precise healing time can not be specified, in any case, the healing takes a long time, because the chin is constantly moving while breathing, chewing and breathing through the mouth and can hardly be avoided, that we encounter it with objects.
The Mandible piercing is called after the mouth tools of insects and lies inside the mouth under the tongue between the chin and mouth. Only after six months has the puncture canal healed.
A rather rare face piercing is a plug above the cheekbone. (Image: pololia / fotolia.com) Possible further face piercings
Other shapes are possible and can be observed at piercing and tattoo conventions. These include rings and plugs in the skin of the forehead and temples as well as on the bridge of the nose or at the bottom of the eye over the cheekbones.
However, these regions are highly exposed to external stimuli, so there is an increased risk of the wound becoming infected on healing, and even after healing, rings tear easily out of the skin. In addition, the skin layer on the forehead and over the cheekbones is very thin, so that there is too little tissue for a stable piercing. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
swell
- Keddie Grant: Symbolism and Context: World History of the Labret and Cultural Diffusion on the Pacific Rim. Circum-Pacific Prehistory Conference, Seattle, August 1-6, 1989 (PDF, 1.7 MB)
- Aglaja Stirn: Piercing - Psychosocial perspectives of a social phenomenon. (PDF) 2003
- https://www.safepiercing.org/