I wish this was me talking about my (non-existent) tattoo but nope, this post is about someone else’s experience. Yesterday, Anne woke up to me sleeping on her couch downstairs because I got to her place way too early for her tattoo appointment. She’s been meaning to get a sakura (cherry blossom) branch tattooed on her shoulder for the longest time and she finally got around to setting up an appointment at Skinworkz, Ricky Sta Ana’s tattoo shop at Cartimar, last week. Despite her excitement and the random “I wanna get my tattoo tomorrow!” messages I would get from Anne over the next couple of days, we showed up two hours after her scheduled appointment yesterday. Gotta love Filipino time.
After they get over the surprise of seeing a girl with an eyebrow piercing, the second question people ask (after “Did that hurt?”) is if I have any tattoos. The answer to that is no, I do not have any tattoos because the last time I brought up that idea, my parents said something along the lines of, “We’re kicking you out of the house AND we’re not paying for your grad school tuition if you come home with black angel wings covering your entire back.” Since my income comes in random spurts these days, I’m not exactly in a financial position to get inked and deal with the consequences. So this is me living vicariously through Anne’s tattoo experience.
Most people have the impression that tattoo parlors are dark, dingy places infested with a whole assortment of diseases related to poor hygiene. It doesn’t really help that you see tattoo artists offering their services in tiny mall stalls with hardly any privacy or worse, at MRT stations for two hundred pesos. Skinworkz, however, is spotless and well-lit and their tattoo artists and piercers are very professional. They even give out sheets of aftercare instructions, which I’ve never gotten before. Besides being a tattoo/piercing place, they also carry a gorgeous collection of body jewelry made out of surgical steel, wood, and other organic materials.
Anne shows off her virginal shoulder while…
…Ricky prepares his gloves, the ink, and the tattoo gun. From what I observed of him while I was there, he’s really easy to get along with, and was more than happy to show me his collection of organic jewelry and the portfolio of his colleagues who do extreme modifications. If I had the parental approval, the design, and the money, I would have definitely asked him to do my angel wings on the spot.
The design gets transferred onto Anne’s skin using carbon paper of sorts.
The tattooing process starts. Anne reports that getting a tattoo is the second most painful experience of her life, next to childbirth. She did add a few minutes later that she got used to the stinging sensation of the needle after a while.
Meanwhile, Ricky Sta. Ana’s cute little son shows me his pet sugar glider.
Thirty minutes later, Anne’s sakura tattoo is almost finished.
Note how there are still droplets of blood on her skin!
Anne’s sakura tattoo
Anne, Ricky Sta. Ana, and me. If you take a closer look, you’ll notice that he’s got subdermal implants on his lower left arm. If you take an even closer look, you’ll also notice that my belly is protruding out of my pants. I feel like a middle-aged father.
Check out my Multiply for the high-res photos.
It took a lot of willpower for me to keep myself from getting another piercing while I was at Skinworkz. I’ve decided that perhaps a side lip ring is a little too extreme but a tiny glittering stud would definitely look cute on my nose and may even get parental approval. Just to make sure, I texted my parents and asked them if they’d still love me if I got my nose pierced; Mom said let’s talk about it, Dad said yes but he wouldn’t be happy. *shrug* Well, ya can’t please everybody! Needless to say, I left the place without any new ink or metal but I may be back at Skinworkz very soon if I can convince my mom that a tiny gem on my nose won’t make me look like some punked-out, strung-out junkie.
It’s true what they say - once you get bitten by the piercing bug, you’re going to want more. And more. Until your body resembles a pincushion and most of genteel society avoids you like the leper in Jerusalem during whatever year Jesus was born.
It’s been over a year since I got my eyebrow pierced, and exactly a year since I got my inverse navel done. In between that time period I got an industrial piercing that semi-freaked out my mom (and which she made me remove after its refusal to heal in three months), and a tongue piercing that REALLY freaked out my parents. I didn’t intend to tell them about the tongue because I knew I could have gotten away with hiding it from them. But despite how “scary” I look with metal through my eyebrow I’m really quite a nice daughter, so I let them know that I had metal through my tongue. I expected them to chalk it up to pre-graduation jitters like they did with my eyebrow but nooo. It got so bad that my mom stormed into my dorm room the next day to give me a lengthy lecture on why a tongue piercing unhealthy and unpleasant and overall bad. When I insisted on taking my chances on the health risks, she told me that my dad refused to see or talk to me until I remove my tongue piercing.
I took out the barbel the next day.
I’ve been itching to get something new on my face as a way to mark the new year, so I asked my mom if I can has a side lip piercing. Unsurprisingly, she said no, but I wasn’t about to drop the issue without a fight. When I asked her why not, she gave me the following reasons:
If I get another facial piercing I will be avoided like the lepers in Jerusalem during whatever year Jesus was born.
“Facial piercings will attract weirdos and will drive decent people away,” my mom said. I argued that I’ve been a weirdo magnet even before I became a pincushion. As for “decent people”? Bah, “decent people” are quick to judge. Just because I have facial piercings doesn’t mean that I spend my spare time shooting heroin and doing everything that moves. I’m willing to bet a lot of money that I’m probably more moral, honest, and generous than all those goody-two-shoes type boys and girls who go to church every Sunday. Besides, if I ever decide to sell my soul to the materialist corporate world again, I can just get rid of the piercing before the job interview.
She does have a fairly valid point though. Assuming that I had a boyfriend who comes from a conservative family, he’d probably dread the day where I have to meet his parents. (Which is not to say that I’d allow myself to end up with someone who’d be ashamed to introduce me to his parents. I’d skewer his nuts with the barbel I used for my tongue piercing before he could ever get ashamed of me.) Girls who have lip piercings aren’t really the type you can take home to mom. Traditional Filipino parents like those girls who are meek like mice and who can’t live their own lives because their own parents won’t allow them to do what they want. I have a sneaking suspicion that if I weren’t my mom’s kid, she’d probably tell her children - especially the sons - to stay far far away from me as possible.
“I just don’t like the way people will treat you if you get any more piercings,” my mom explained.
Silence as I imagined all the looks women and little old church ladies will throw at me if I add more metal to my face. That look of horror mixed with disgust and curiosity as to what would drive such a pretty girl to “ruin her face” like that.
Everyone will think that my parents are bad parents.
“Trust me, it will break our hearts to see you with a lip piercing,” my mom said.
Nothing makes me give in and shut up like the guilt card.
“Not to mention the gossip that we are bad parents,” she added.
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
I’m not sure why old school Filipinos would come to the conclusion that whatever I do with my life is a reflection of how well (or how badly) my parents raised me. Maybe it’s our close family ties and the big say parents have over their childrens’ lives, even when their children are old enough to think for themselves. Maybe Filipinos still believe the Freudian theory that all adult neuroses are caused by parenting mistakes. In any case, I’d hate for anyone to think that I turned out “wrong” because my parents dropped me on the head as a baby.
Of all the bullshit things to teach children about life, none is more false than “It’s your inner beauty that counts.” Whether we like it or not, people will judge us by our appearances and will judge us harshly when we deliberately choose to cross the line between what’s acceptable and what isn’t. Even the West hasn’t gotten rid of stereotype that people who have piercings and tattoos are criminals or mentally unsound. I was slightly offended when a friend from the US thought I grew up a lot because I hadn’t gotten a weird hair color or a new piercing in months. (Since when was wanting to experiment with the way you look a sign of immaturity?) I’d probably get a lot worse than that from people here if I get any more metal on my face.
The thing is, it’s easy for me to be zen about the weird looks from strangers and the inevitable “What have you done to yourself? Bakit mo sinira mukha mo?” from conservative relatives. I really couldn’t care less about what other people think of the way I choose to look. What I do care about is preserving my relationships with the people who matter and making sure I do nothing to damage what we have. My relationship with my parents included. While I’d never allow my parents to make important life decisions for me, like what career path to take or who to marry, they can have their way with the little things. And if never getting another piercing makes them happy - well, so be it.
I still maintain that a lip piercing gives me 1,000 hotness points though.
“Perhaps in twenty years, Filipinos will become more progressive and open-minded about piercings,” my mom said, as though trying to make me feel better.
“Fine,” I grumbled. “I’ll get another facial piercing when I turn forty. At that age, I’m pretty sure nobody’s going to think I got my lip pierced because you toilet-trained me the wrong way or whatever.”
“Go ahead. But you’ll probably have your own kids by then, who’ll police you and ask you to stop trying to act like a teenager by getting all these facial piercings.”
Bah.
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.
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