Right up until about a week before I went out and got my eyebrow pierced, I really found eyebrow piercings to be quite unattractive. I think probably I had gotten a bad impression based on several friends whose eyebrows I had only seen in the last stages of rejection and my ex-girlfriend whose piercing was done so deep it never ever healed and, indeed, was rather goo-ily infected for the entire time that we were dating. Anyway, thus having rather negative feelings towards eyebrow piercings, I am not sure just how it suddenly dawned on me that this was something that I wanted on my face. It was September which is when I have done most of my body modification, I guess because my birthday is at the beginning of the month and, for students, September is the time for new beginnings. This particular September represented a lot of new beginnings for me because I was moving from Edinburgh to Oxford and beginning a new degree in a new subject. I had already gotten a tattoo for m y birthday into which I had managed to cram symbolism representing Scotland, my old degree, my new degree, my feminist leanings, my birthday, etc. (a heavily overburdened piece of artwork!), but I felt that I wanted something more. Hence, the eyebrow.
At A Glance Author rallanah Contact rallanah@bme.anon IAM rallanah When A year ago Studio Urban Tattoo and Body Piercing Location Edinburgh, Scotland Once this idea crept into my head I looked at a lot of pictures on BME, convincing myself that it really could look good. I also read a lot of experiences trying to make myself believe that it wouldn't be searingly painful. The only other piercing I had (besides standard earrings) was my nostril which I had done 5 years ago. At the time, I was amazed by how little that hurt, but I still felt skeptical that putting a needle under what seemed to be a fairly random flap of skin on my face could be anything less than agonizing. Well, after a lot of thought and consideration I decided to do it... maybe.
My personal philosophy of life is never to force any action but to just go with the flow of things and see where it leads me. So one sunny (well, relatively sunny anyway, this was Scotland, after all) Saturday afternoon I set out shopping and decided that if my path should take me to the piercing shop, then that would be a sign that I should get pierced. I knew that I would go to Urban Tattoo where I had gotten two tattoos before. The people are really nice and approachable and they have high standards of hygiene. Well, late in the afternoon I found myself heading home past the street where the shop is. I figured they probably weren't even open, but as I went past the street they had a placard out advertising a sale on all piercings, and I knew that I had been given a sign.
I went down to the shop and told the girl at the counter what I wanted. She called the piercer out and we had a chat. He had helped me pick out the designs for both of my tattoos and was a really nice guy, but I have unfortunately forgotten his name! Anyway, I had been kind of set on getting a circular barbell, but he said they couldn't do it with that because the threads on the curvature were more likely to damage the inside of the new piercing as the jewelry was inserted, so I decided to go with the standard straight barbell. So on with the show!
I went back into the piercing room, and he cleaned the area and marked two dots where he would do the piercing. I had him change it to a bit farther up on my eyebrow and then I was all set. He put the clamps on (not painful at all, just slightly uncomfortable) and had me lie down and close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. On one of these breaths, the piercing transpired. The pain was quite minimal, really more of a sensation of stinging and pressure, and then it was over. I found the jewelry insertion to be entirely painless. I stood up and looked at me new piercing in the mirror. It was great! Two little silver balls on either side of my eyebrow. Very sweet. I got a copy of the aftercare instructions and drifted off in a blurry sort of adrenaline rush haze.
About halfway home I realized that I had never paid anyone for my piercing and had to go back even though I was dying to get home and look at it in the mirror some more! Anyway, I knew that not paying these nice people trying to run a business would be totally unconscionable, so I headed back. When I got back to the shop, they all seemed baffled to be seeing me again so soon, but were appreciative when I explained why I had returned.
It took me a couple of days to get totally comfortable with the look of my new piercing, but, ultimately, I really liked the way it turned out. It seemed a touch feminine relative to my usual look but not in a bad way. I cleaned it religiously twice a day with saline solution and it healed very easily within about two months. At that point I bought the circular barbell I had been wanting and interchanged it with the straight barbell off and on.
Within about two months, however, it was already clear that it was starting to grow out. Over the next couple of months I watched the skin under the barbell get thinner and thinner. By the time I had had it for about four months the skin the piercing went under was perpetually red and the eyebrows on that little strip had fallen out. I finally decided that I couldn't stand looking like another one of those people with the rejecting eyebrow ring and took it out. Afterwards a lot of people asked me why I had taken it out; apparently, no one else had really noticed that it was rejecting, but I had, and I didn't like it. For a while my eyebrow stayed bald in a little stripe where the piercing had been but now, about 6 months later, it has grown back, and I only have the most minute scar to mark where the piercing used to be.
The eyebrow piercing was probably the least well thought through of my body modifications (I tend to really think and rethink things in advance), but it was a fun kind of spur of the moment thing to do and livened up my face for a little while. I don't think there's anything I could have done differently to decrease the likelihood of rejection, but I'm glad I got to be one of the eyebrow pierced girls, if only for a little while.