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Body Piercing for fun and profit

Nipples and Navels are popular sites
By Andy Rose
Staff Wrtier

Earrings are nice, but today's body piercing fans go far beyond the lobes.

The cutting edge means penetrating nipples - the most popular site - eyebrows, the navel, the neck and even the genitals.

A metal ring looped through someone's genitals evokes a predictable reaction in squeamist types: YIKES! OUCH! OHMYGODZIPITUPNOW!

But shrieks and stares are part of the fun for enthusiasts. To people like Earl Van Aken II of Los Alamitos, body piercing is an art form, and the body is the canvas.

"I am a creative manifestation of myself," says Van Aken, who admits that he loves the gaze-gathering nature of his passion. And a passion it is - Van Aken's body could accomodate a good chunk of Liz Taylor's jewelry collection.

Several pieces spangle the back of his ears, and self designed double spooles dangle from his lobes. Bars and rings adorn the bridge of his nose, his tonge, the back of his neck, both nostrils, both nipples and his navel. And he has a ring and a bar through his penis.

The practice became a craze in recent years. At the Gauntlet, 8720 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, one of hte biggest piercing stores in Southern California, business is so good the company recently opened corporate offices. There are also Gauntlets in San Francisco and New York City.

Manager and master piercer Elayne Binnie said the store, which also offers jewelry, T-shirts, piercing magazines, mail-order gear and a tattoo service, logged 63 clients back in December 1989. Busincess increased to 277 in December 1990 and 333 the year after. Las month there were 510 piercings, includign the stardard pierced ears.

Although body piercing has long been popular among such groups as punk rock fans and bikers, Binnie says today's clientele ranges from musicians to doctors to a bank president. One Orange County police officer has a few piercings including a bar in his tongue, she said.

Trish Curley runs a Long Beach-based body piercing service, workingout of her home or at the Crypt, a clothing and novelty store at 1712 W. Broadway. She said many people havea spiritual need for piercing, which has historical precedent in a number of cultures, from Amazons to Romans to the Victorians.

Curley said some of her own piercings were done to mark significant events in her life, and many people commemorate such things as marriage, divorce or even staying clean and sober.

There is a $25 fee for the process which can take up to 30 minutes, depending on the body part. The jewerly costs $30 or more. Gauntlet customers pay the same for the first piercing, but subsequent visits cost only $20.

So a needle in the nipple must feel sort of like a thermonuclear blast, right?

"It's not really a painful procedure. You'd be surprised," said Curley.

She said no anesthetic is used except when venturing below the belt buckle with men or women. Genital piercings for women usually involve the labia.

Curley maintains that such piercing does not interfere with sex or hte use of condoms since the jewelry is smooth, and some people feel it can heighten and prolong sexual pleasure.

None of the piercings inhibit bodily functions, said Curley, nothing, for example, that she enjoys pzza with no interferance from the jewelry in her tongue. Most of the piercings are too small to set off airport detectors, she said.

There is apparently little medical research on piercing, but at least one local doctor said the sexual arrousal notion probably has more to do with the mind than metal.

Dr. Kelly Butler, who runs an HIV testing program in Long Beach and works at Memorial Medical Center, considers it "basically a fetish. For some people, that's big breasts; for some people it's blue eyes; for others its tan lines."

Butler and Memorial epidemiologist Harriett Pitt said they knew of no evindence indicating major problems resulting from piercing. But Butler said there is always the threat of HIV infection if needles are resused without being sterilized.

Curley and Gauntlet piercers go through a sterilization process that includes a number of cleaning solutions, bleach and several hot-water rinses. Each needle is then sealed in a plastic bag.

There is no licensing requirement for piercers in California, but Binnie said Gauntlet employees generallly train for about a year in the store before performing any piercings on customers.