What's the Deal With Piercings?

One fad I don't understand is getting pierced. From what I hear it's painful to get pierced, which I probably would've guessed had I not been told. The part that makes it really ridiculous to me though, is that piercings are ugly. Getting a piercing is the equivalent of saying "I'm making a conscious decision to look worse."

There's this semi-famous girl who I find to be pretty attractive. I recently saw a picture of her with a huge stud in her nose and she suddenly seemed a lot less attractive to me. Why do girls think nose piercings are "cute" or good-looking in any way? They're not. It seems like every other girl has her navel pierced these days too. I don't understand the point of that either. If you wear clothes that reveal your navel you don't look very respectable, and it serves no purpose but to get in the way if no one can see it. Eyebrow, tongue and lip piercings are equally useless. I look at people with these things and try to figure out what made them want to get them. My best guess is that they reached a certain age and decided "If I punch holes in my body that'll prove I'm my own person!" When you break it down getting pierced is a pretty vacuous activity.

As an American I grew up seeing women with pierced earlobes as acceptable. While I don't particularly like pierced ears, it's the only type of piercing that doesn't turn me off due to my being exposed to it at an early age. Anything else though, is just unnecessary and unpleasant to look at.

All I can say is that I hope piercing will go out of vogue someday. This fascination with affixing metal to one's anatomy is rather disturbing.

Move over Andy Rooney. You've got company.