Girl with the Crystal Earring

I slide a comb through my hair each morning, and often have to pull back a hank of it in order to brush it out. Whenever I do this, it reveals the shell of my ear, and green crystal flashes in the light. Those earrings have been in my ear since Christmas, except for the few occasions which I remove them in classes to fiddle with as a nervous habit.

These earrings are in the second holes. I rarely wear anything in the first holes anymore. Yet, I remember after I got the second pair pierced, hardly a day would pass when I wouldn’t have four earrings on. I believed the adornments gave me a little beautiful.

Now I remove the earring, sliding my fingernail between the clasp and the back of my ear. The fingers on the other hand pinch the crystal from the front, and as soon as I have a firm hold, I jerk my nail and pry the clasp from post, the momentum pulling the earring from my earlobe completely.

I set the green crystal earring on the wooden board that my computer rests on, and my eyes continually dart to it as I type.

What is the earring’s purpose? It doesn’t seem to be for anything besides decoration. It draws attention to the face, and also can serve as a form of expression of individuality.

But how did society decide that piercings are attractive? What constitutes beauty? Why is beauty and attractive qualities different from culture to culture?

When I was when seven years old, I had my ears pierced. My mother insisted that the earrings be 24 karat gold in case I was allergic to nickel, just like she was. I agreed, and picked out the prettiest ones I could find. The pink frosting color of the embedded crystal belied the vicious sharpness of the posts. By eight, my right ear had got inflicted, and the skin had grown over the front of the earring. In order for the earring not to be permanently affixed in my earlobe, my mother immediately brought me to the doctor’s office.

The numbing cream didn’t work and I screamed when the doctor pushed the front of the earring through the scabby skin covering it, then removed the entire post and clasp.

Still, as soon as the ear healed, I returned to the piercer’s again. I wanted to match.

A couples years later I was in the chair again for the second holes. This time the piercer’s gun caught on the earrings that had just been implanted in my head, tearing and pulling at flesh that had skewered only moments before.

Why do people put themselves through so much pain for the sake of beauty? It is even an adage: “beauty is pain.”

People get tattoos, or even have surgery in order to alter their bodies. But when you think about all these body modifications, plain and simple they are mutilations. So how did this tradition of piercing and tattooing start? How did our society come to view something that causes us pain to be beautiful and attractive? What does that say about us?