Opinions are fine, but when you offer an opinion as if it were the objective truth, and claim to know what’s in other people’s minds, then you just sound like a jackass.
There is no “logical excuse” (i.e., utilitarian, practical reason) for wearing any jewellery at all, whether it be rings, necklaces, earrings, bangles, or whatever. Even wedding rings are nothing more than symbols, with no legally-binding use separate from the official recognition of marriage.
Even some of the clothing we wear defies logic. Ties serve no practical purpose, and can even be a hindrance. And why all those outrageous colors? Wouldn’t it be easier if we all wore grey?
Some people don’t like piercings and tattoos. Fine. But to crap on about motivations, to make stupid generalizations, and to assert a knowledge of what goes on in the minds of people you have never met really does nothing but bring into question your own motivations. It’s a pretty shallow person who can’t even accept that aesthetic tastes differ, and that they are often not explicable by simple appeals to logic.
As in (to paraphrase your statements): “If you make a generalization in an opinion forum, you are stupid.” “If you question aesthetic taste, you are shallow.” “If you assert a knowledge of what goes on in someone’s mind, your motivations are suspect.”
Are those the sorts of “jackass” opinions you’re speaking of?
Actually, each of those (rather inadequate) paraphrasings would not be so bad, in and of itself. But to combine them all in a ridiculously simplistic way, as Clothahump did, is just to invite ridicule.
As i suggested, i have no problem with other people’s aesthetic taste, and nor do i have a problem with critiquing aesthetic taste. However, i do have a problem with people whose whole attitude seems to revolve around the belief that “Anything that i don’t like is objectively bad.”
And you completely ignore the substantive argument i made about the Clothahump’s asinine post, which was that, if we are to judge aesthetics purely on the basis of “logical” or utilitarian principles, it is far more than piercings and tattoos that needs to be examined.
But, having just read this post:
i shouldn’t expect you to provide a reasonable response. Anyone who’d deny a qualified person the ability to earn a living based on their choice of jewellery, and revel in the injustice and the possible illegality of such a position, has made his own level of intelligence and humanity abuindantly clear.
I’m a suit-wearing lawyer sellout nowadays, but I still have the sleeve tattoos from my dreadlocked freak days, during which time I also had several piercings. I did this for pretty much the reasons you would suspect: namely, my pathological desire to obtain the approval of everyone on the planet concerning my general appearance. Now you mean to tell me my conduct may in fact have had the opposite effect and actually served to meet with disapproval in some quarters, including limiting my choice of sexual partners in certain instances? Oh, how I have erred! Erred, I say!
Actually, that wasn’t it. I have deep mental disturbances and issues of self-esteem that I can only express by getting tattoos and piercings. It takes one look at the heart with the arrow through it on my bottom to know that I am, like all tattooed and pierced people, a profoundly disturbed individual in need of counseling, medication, and self-help books endorsed by the Oprah Winfrey show. Take a look at Popeye, for example: he has serious reltationship issues with a non-committal women who continually leads him on and sets him up for failure, and expresses his frustrations though violence. His fits of rage and violence he associates with certain foods, possibly indicating an eating disorder. Is it any coincidence this sad individual displays prominent anchor tattoos on his apparently deformed, bulging forearms?
Actually, that’s not it either. I really did it so I could participate in the monthly “Why do people engage in [x activity], which I do not like? Do they think it’s attractive? What the fuck are they thinking?” threads, which I find so engaging.
If I may quote you: “Opinions are fine, but when you offer an opinion as if it were the objective truth, and claim to know what’s in other people’s minds, then you just sound like a jackass.”
I don’t mind tattoos or piercings at all. I do think, however, that if people get a piercing or a tattoo, they should be aware that there are going to be people with prejudices against them and take that into account.
I kind of like some piercings, if the person wearing them has nice jewellery in them, and takes care of them. Tattoos are a bit less likable; you can’t take them out, and if they’re badly done they can look pretty awful. Also, I don’t like tattoos that are cartoon characters or naked women or something that obviously came off of the tattoo parlor wall. A tattoo should be well done, original, and not offensive, im my opinion.
As for myself, I have two piercings in each ear, and I’m slowly stretching the first set. They’re at 14g now, and my plan is to get them a little bigger (about 10g), and then wear an eyelet in them. No plans for a tattoo yet, but if I do get one, I’ll be sure to get it where I can cover it up and not offend any of you guys.
Oh, please. Do you honestly think that this is the only superficial quality that employers are using to rule people out? Try going to your next job interview in dirty clothes with your hair unkempt, and see how fast they hire you. In fact, try gaining 50 pounds and then going to job interviews if you want to see superficial.
I see piercings and tattooes as decoration, in the same way as everything else we adorn our bodies with is decoration, and in the end it neither hides nor enhances what is already there. In my opinion a sexy man with piercings and/or tattooes is a sexy man, just as a sexy man without piercings and/or tattooes is a sexy man. So long as he can turn me on and make me laugh, I don’t mind how much or how little hardware and ink he wears.
(And not all piercings heal invisibly. I have visible proof I used to be a rebel).
Ears, noses and sometimes belly buttons don’t bother me. Tongue piercings still make my skin crawl, as do eyebrows. I don’t even like to think about penile piercings. (The first time I overheard a woman telling a friend how she’d helped a gay friend pierce his penis I nearly passed out from imagined pain, and I’m getting a little right now, so I’m stopping this post.
I’ll step up to the plate here. I’ve got a clitoral piercing. No, not the hood, not the inner labia, a vertical piercing (running front-to-back) a teentsy little 20g curved barbell through the middle of my clitoris, to the right of the nerve bundle.
Actual clitoral piercings are, from what I understand, fairly rare, as many women do not have the proper anatomy to support jewellery in that region. Many professional piercers refuse to do them, as it’s a slightly dangerous piercing, due to the possiblity of nerve damage. Big risk. Mine was done by a master piercer in San Francisco, trained (and recommended to me) by someone very well-known and widely respected, and has been doing professional body piercing for, I believe, about twenty years. Mine was only the sixteenth he’d ever done. Compare that to the many thousands of, say, tongue piercings he’s done, and you’ll get that it’s an uncommon proceedure.
Generally speaking, it greatly enhances sex, although the results are different for different women. For me, it’s sort of like everything I felt before was two dimensional, now clitoral stimulation is felt in 3d ;). Even rotating the barbell, sitting as it does directly next to the nerve bundle, does fantastic things.
I’ve heard of women who have them having spontaneous orgasms just by walking around, but I’ve never experienced anything of the kind. However, squeezing my thighs together in just the right way while sitting down does very nice things :).
For me, tattoos and piercings are the same as clothes, jewelry and haircuts-whether they’re attactive or not depends on the style and the person wearing them. They’re enhancers for the people who pull them off well, but for people who aren’t sexy without them, they don’t help.
