I live in a small city with a large and largely liberal college population, and amongst the usual facial piercings and tattoos, there is the occasional person who has slowly stretched out their ear lobes with disks of ever increasing sizes going up to two or three inches across. Personally, I’m not enamored of the look, but then there’s lots of looks that don’t do anything for me.
What I’m curious about is what can a person with such accouterments expect to face if and when they come to a day where they no longer wish to have these. From what little I’ve read, the stretched out tissue is not easily corrected through surgery, and the resulting holes are of a size that will not be able to close on its own over time. Also, I would assume that just leaving the large loops of tissue hanging without plugs would be both dangerous and unsatisfying to someone wishing to leave the look behind.
So do you know anyone who wears these? Do you know anyone who has quit wearing them or wishes to? If so, how did they/are they going about it?
I’ve seen that look on a guy who clerks at a video/CD store I sometimes frequent, who has ear plugs and multiple piercings. I dunno what he’ll do when the place is, I think inevitably, rendered obsolete. Video/CD stores have the sort of sensibility where extreme fashions are not discouraged, but I can’t think of too many other retail outlets that are similar.
For real hardcore fashion, I’m waiting to see if lip plugs catch on.
One of the vet techs at the vet I go to has a bunch of tattoos, piercings, and very stretched earlobes.
My WAG is that correcting the situation would require minor reconstructive surgery, probably something like removing a lot of the loop of skin and patching the rest together. You’d probably end up with earlobes that had scarring on them, but much more “average” looking than before.
I have it on both of my ears. I regret having done it (I did it when I was eighteen and kind of thinking I’d be living like an eighteen-year-old forever), and now that I’m actually looking into my future it doesn’t fit where I want to go with my life. But the alternative at the moment is walking around with ear vaginas so I’m just waiting.
Since it produces extra skin, it’s pretty much an ideal body modification for later surgical correction. This involves pictures of a mutilated ear lobe, but it explains how it would be done. It’ll shrink up a bit on its own once there’s no longer any stretching going on, but it won’t go away completely without surgical intervention.
There’s a young guy in my office who has hoops about the size of a dime in his ears; they don’t look too weird at that size, but I think they spoil his looks (he’s adorable otherwise).
I once saw a guy who had stretched his lobes way out like the OP describes, when he wasn’t wearing anything in them. The way that what was left of the lobes flapped around in the breeze was kind of nauseating. As a rule I don’t like body art or piercings, except for regular earrings, but this was especially gross to me.
Roddy
I know a few people and I can say that it’s the only more mainstream body mod that seriously grosses me out (sorry Dopers with this!). One of my friends decided she wanted to go into high school administration, so she’s now looking into the only way she can to get them fixed: plastic surgery.
My little brother, now 19 1/2, wore these when he was 14-15. The holes closed up and now appear only pierced (and slightly sagging, though I doubt the average person would notice). I think they took 2.5 years or so until they looked normal; for awhile they looked awful. Awful both in his ears and after he took them out. I think the biggest “earrings” were maybe 1.5" in diameter, so never those 5" suckers or anything. I think his lobes only looked gross and gape-like for maybe 6 months.
And anyone who needs a real job or has some sense knocked into them quits wearing them. For my brother, the sense was knocked into him by pretty girls saying they looked like shit.
Now, as a college student going into the Navy SEALS, he has a buzz cut and resembles very little of his former self.
I just can’t put up with that for that long and the saggy look I’ve seen is pretty unsatisfactory. It’s good to know it only took about 2.5 years to get to that point, though. I’ve heard much longer time frames from most people I’ve talked to.
I make jewelry here in San Francisco and get requests for large-gauge jewelry all the time. Needless to say, this is an area of the world where such things are more than prevalent; I see lobe disks and plugs on guys and girls in the financial district who are also wearing business suits.
It does nothing for me, but I’m happy for the business.
A friend in college had ones the size of quarters. He took them out for good his junior year, as he was planning to go straight into a doctoral program. Well before he graduated college, the holes closed up entirely. What was left was less than a dimple. He was surprised at his luck, and he did go onto get his doctorate.
“Know” is a little too strong a word in my case. There is a guy at a sub shop I go to who has them. I guess if I ran into him somewhere beyond the shop I’d yell hello to him, but I don’t really know him very well.
I had half-inch lobes for five years or so. I took them out in mid 2005. I didn’t do anything special, just stopped wearing the plugs. My ears look fine; they’ve just got small creases in them where the holes have shrunk to about 2mm. You really couldn’t tell I ever had anything weird there, I wear normal earrings and everything.
Very YMMV, though. Some ears close completely, some have small slits, some get a bit of a “cat’s ass”, which I agree is gross, some gape and some people choose to have the excess lobe removed by a doctor. You can get some very neat results that way, though.
And that’s nice of you to say, lindsaybluth. Wrong, though. I have a real job with own desk and chair and carpeting and use of the company pen and everything. I’m planning to stretch mine again, but perhaps I just need some sense knocked into me. That must be it.
Huh, I was going to say I know a fellow who has his ears gauged, but upon looking at a recent photo it appears that he’s now wearing regular sized earrings. So I guess they probably can close up a little over time.
I know quite a few, but they’re all tattoo artists or body piercers, where that sort of thing doesn’t really affect their present or future employability.