Holes

"Things don't change. You change your way of looking, that's all."--Carlos Castaneda

It would be a mistake to think I don't see the disapproval in your eyes. You think because I allow my kids to pierce their tragus, their bellybutton, their nose, that I am a lesser mother for it. What kind of mother would encourage that sort of thing? They look like hoodlums, for God's sake, or worse, the sort who would do drugs and steal your car. Kids who have more holes in their bodies than they were born with must be poor students, disrespectful of authority, having sex at 14.
I used to think just like you. When I'd see a kid with piercings my immediate assumption was that he was troubled, or got into trouble on a regular basis. I couldn't have been more wrong.
On any given day, my kids' teenage friends sit at my kitchen table doing their homework, intermittently rummaging in my fridge or the cabinets for anything edible. They are making vomit sounds, yelling, "Gag me!" or laughing hysterically. They are also reading The Great Gatsby aloud and answering the odd math question. Most of them have pierced several parts of their bodies, and have plans to pierce a tongue or an eyebrow. And so what?
I wonder sometimes at the adults who sit in judgement of a kid who makes a choice different from his or her own. My own family has looked askance at me because of my seemingly liberal view on this subject. It's hysterical  because anyone who is acquainted with me knows I'm pretty conservative politically, the lone Republican in the sea of Democrats who sit around my parents' dining room table.
I just believe that kids need to express themselves in safe ways. I've always discussed Max and Olivia's piercings ahead of time and have made sure they thought long and hard about what they were about to do. Olivia is my fashionable kid and Max is the artsy type. Their piercings fit them.
Doesn't this view of kids with piercings come from a place of ignorance and intolerance? One could make parallels between that judgement and the judgement of people with disabilities who look, act, learn differently. I vote that everyone take a step back and look beyond the nose ring, the wheelchair, the facial differences, and quit the judgemental crap. You may very well find your theory is full of....holes.