NEWS: Body Mods 101 With Shotgun Suicide: Pt 5 – Gauges

very cool

That was impressively bad.

Gauges is an incorrect term, and I agree Exning should have helped.

From you that's a laughable comment.

What's easier for the typical uninformed person on the street to say? Gauges or stretched earlobe piercings?

For better or worse, "gauges' has now entered the vernacular of body modification language. When someone asks me about my stretched ear piercings and they use the term gauges, I instantly know what they are talking about. The smaller jewelry is, after all, measured in gauges so it's not as if the term is unrelated to its function.

but it's like calling your car "miles". gauges is a measurement not a name for jewelry.

Everyone I know uses the word gauges. Is this like one of those "it's pop in chicago and soda in New Jersey and dr. pepper in the south" sort of things?

True, but the actual jewelry was referred to as gauges several times near the end of the video.
It was just vague and confusing and, well, bad.

Is it okay for people who can't stop eatinf go off on a tonge piercing galavant? If you toungr already has so many inflamed little redish tape wormish looking blotch spots and they constantly burns and sting is it okay to keep biting? I love miss in my mouth the ..

Yeahh..I'd see a doctor about that ASAP.

Total thread derail, but:

exactly! it's like saying "tattoo gun" -just be cause it's common, doesn't mean it's right.

I see no one else ever directly addressed it. Being as there are many experienced piercers and pierced people here I'd left it to others to point on the whys this was so amazingly horrible.

(it occurs to me this may have been intended for humor and that I'm mistakenly taking it as a serious informational clip. If that's so, I apologize.)

1). When you properly and healthfully stretch a piercing it does Not Hurt. If it does, you need to take the larger jewelry out, go back down at least one size and then wait longer or do slow gradual methods of (painless) stretching like taping.

2). If your stretched piercing in any way has the "cat's butt" effect, you stretched too fast and did damage to the tissue. You should downsize a 2+ sizes and massage them daily with an oil such as jojoba until they are healed and looking healthy. Then slowly and painlessly begin stretching back up again, if desired. Lobes that have been stretched slowly and correctly do not get the "cat butt" effect.

3). Stretching by working a piece of tapering jewelry (like the crescent given as an example) in to the hole and fiddling damages the piercing. Same with the straight style tapers that are mistakenly used for stretching through slow force and irritation (the Exact incorrect and damaging method "taught" in this video). If using a taper to move to the next largest mm, the proper method is to use a steel or glass taper, lubricate it, and slide it easily and painlessly through the hole, following it with the larger jewelry. Again, painlessly. A freshly stretched piercing should at most feel comfortably tight at first.

4) Porous materials should never be used in a freshly stretched piercing. So a double "no" on the plastic crescent example. Only non-porous materials should be used in stretching a piercing. Even when a stretch has seemed to go smoothly with no pain there can still be micro-tears in the fistula which can lead to infection if it is done with a porous material.

There. Now at least accurate information is available to anyone ignorant about how to stretch and is foolishly inclined to actually follow the info/lesson in this video. PLEASE if you do not know how to safely and healthfully stretch a piercing, visit the pierced and body modifications groups here and ask questions. Bodyartforms.com also has a forum dedicated to stretching piercings with experienced piercers and pierced people on it.

Good luck folks!