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At long sweet last, my eBay orders finally arrived I can finally get around to stretching my lobes again.

ZOMG what is Lauren up to now?! Why is she stretching her lobes? Is she using this to distract herself from her addiction to nicotine? Might it be the by-product of her existential angst, her anger towards the fact that credentialism is the sole means to a comfortable life today? Is she trying to make a social statement? A political statement? Is lobe stretching perhaps a young girl’s journey to spiritual enlightenment?

Unfortunately, my reasons for lobe stretching isn’t a particularly profound one. It’s not a form of “rebellion” nor is it a means to achieve some sort of zen spiritual experience. It’s not even an expression of angst. I’m doing it for the aesthetics. I love the way large lobes look, and you can wear the most gorgeous jewelry in them. And fine–I’ll admit that this is a form of distraction, but only because I don’t want any piercings or tattoos for now.

A brief explanation on how lobe stretching is (properly) done: there are several ways to stretch lobes, but I prefer using tapers. Tapers are made out of stainless steel or acrylic, and they’re used to stretch piercings so they may accomodate larger-sized jewelry. The size of the jewelry is called a gauge. The smaller the number gets, the larger the gauge or the hole of the piercing is. (Here is a gauge to milimeter conversion chart, just to give you an idea of how large/small sizes are.)

I hope that made sense, I’m no good at explaining things.

When you get your lobes pierced with a gun, the gauge of the earring is around 20g or 18g. The weight of normal dangly earrings made my lobe piercings (which I’ve had since birth) a 16g; two months ago I stretched it to a 12g. Today I went from 12g to 8g with a taper.

Time for some lobe-stretching fun!
(Warning: depending on your weirdness tolerance level, this might be a little gross. Although I personally don’t think it is. )

My naked right and left lobes at 12g.

My right and left lobes with the tapers in–all lubricated and shiny with baby oil.

Ear tunnels/plugs. You simply screw out the back part (the non-bling side), insert the jewelry, then screw it right back in.

Right and left lobes, with the jewelry in.

And me, the proud owner of 8g lobes.
(My mom is going to kill me. >< )

The process didn’t hurt, although the taper was met by my right lobe with some resistance. But with a lot of baby oil and some gentle pushing and twisting, the taper went through in fifteen minutes. You can’t really tell that my lobes are stretched, which is good because capitalists don’t pay for embodied souls with large earlobes. On the other hand, I wish it were a little more obvious. What fun are stretched lobes if the holes can’t be seen?

Oh, and I am indeed fully aware that at a certain gauge, my earlobes won’t shrink back to normal. I definitely want my lobes to get bigger and while it’s not likely that I’ll change my mind about it, I’m in no big hurry to get large lobes. Though I must admit that I’m looking forward to the day where I can gross people out by putting a finger through my lobes. Ha!