I hate my work commute for many reasons, as every good little worker does. It takes over an hour to travel from my home to the office. That trek is courtesy of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, a system run by three kids in a trench coat fixing the tracks with chewing gum and a dream. My office stop is an industrial no-man's-land; a thick slab of concrete with 70s-era speakerphones that blare out announcements with a bizarre automated voice. You want to know when the next train is coming? Don’t worry, Brutalist Siri declares its impending arrival every thirty seconds.
There is a smaller, more petty reason for my dislike. Every time I arrive at the platform for the evening ride home, I encounter employees from the chic design company down the street. They look how you’d imagine them to. Fresh manicures. Fitted jeans. Jackets from the most upscale vintage stores. Sophistication just rolls off them, oozes out of their pores, seeps down to the beautiful tennis shoes they all wear. All of them. Literally all of them wear the exact same shoes. They must. It’s the most popular item they produce. Company policy I’m sure. And I sit there, feel their haughtiness, stew in my summer dresses and itchy sweaters I’ve had since high school. Outdated. Outwitted. Outmatched.
A particular accessory stands out. One I hadn’t noticed at first, one that became ubiquitous the longer I stood on that godforsaken platform, and one those style icons could never sport a decade ago.
Piercings.
Plural.
In corporate America.
The horror!
Full disclosure (which isn’t even a disclosure, I’m happy to tell you this): I have a double piercing. The ultimate look for young women who crave to be cool yet balk at the idea of pissing their relatives off too much. And you know what? My own co-workers have a variety of piercings. All hip with the times. But the design company triggered the realization that previous rules of “work appropriate dress” have changed. Piercings, past signifiers of counterculture, have been sublimated into a new standard of acceptable workwear. Companies know that the youths are seizing onto evermore revolutionary ideologies in the face of climate collapse and the cost of living crisis. They’ve relaxed the dress code a tad, just a tad, to assuage any kind of radical signifier. I mean, who cares that your clients are the reason Florida will be underwater in fifty years when your manager is cool with a conch ring?
Be cool and be you in your cubicle. But don’t ruminate too deeply about the state of the world, you gotta get up early tomorrow to catch the train.
According to Dazed Magazine's history of piercing, body modification dates back to prehistoric times. Piercings pop up in any ancient culture you can think of - Egyptians, Romans, Mesoamerica. The rise of (surprise surprise!) Christianity transformed the practice into a taboo art form. As European colonization spread across the globe, piercings were denigrated as the practice of subcultures and marginalized groups, demonized right on through the twentieth century.1
Subcultures and marginalized groups are key here. I mean, the first modern American piercing shop in Los Angeles was staffed by people into BDSM. Nose rings only came to this country because South Asian women pierced theirs first. 80s-era punks were rife with crazy jewelry strewn across their faces.2 And everyone knows about the gay piercing: right lobe means your gay, left lob means your straight.
My piercings, present and future, are not in the same vein as these groups. There is no cultural significance to my deeply desired nose ring; if anything, it would be a rejection of the belief system I came up in. And my double piercings align with the acceptable straight girl image. No industrials will slice through cartilage, no gauges will force a lobe open, no bellybuttons, no eyebrows, no you-know-whats you-know-where. Counterculture? Don’t know her. No, me and my fellow female workers are ALL about the mainstream. We take a page out of the Mejuri handbook and aspire for the aesthetic of the curated ear. Hoops in the primary hole, delicate studs up the helix, maybe a little something in the nose if we’re cheeky. Don’t even ask the corporate bros if they’re down to play. Contrary to Jacob Elordi’s erotic eyebrow stud, their faces are squeaky clean, devoid of metal, aesthetically bereft in every way possible.
How boring is that? Even “cool” accessories have been warped by gender politics and workplace drudgery. Maybe piercings aren’t that radical in the first place if they can be co-opted so easily. In her article Body Piercing: Gender Nihilism in the 90s, Karen Aubrey examined the explosion of piercings across the gender spectrum during the Grunge movement, an era characterized by androgyny and artistic purity above all else.3 Her thesis states that body piercing took on a genderless quality as it became a method to “deny” the “reality” of the body. I don’t agree with most of it as she maintains pretty narrow-minded ideas of gender presentation, as well as invalidates material expressions of eroticism.4 But her article did jumpstart my brain at certain places.
Like here: “If body piercing is a way of altering the body, of negating gender differences and denying the body’s sexual dimension, that would imply a degree of dissatisfaction with the body.”5 Ah. Hmm. Corporate-friendly piercings may alter the body, but they only reinforce stereotypical gender and sexuality markers. The girls and the gays step into the office with chopped-up ears. Straight guys come in boring as hell, a status they can get away with their entire lives. And as our sexual dimensions are reinforced in an essentialist sense, they are denied in an erotic sense as long as the “corporate uniform” maintains its chokehold.
Can we unite in our banality? Comrades not C-suite, right? Could we accept our bodies the way they are WITH modifications present? Like, everyone is “dissatisfied with their bodies” when they come into the office. Even the finance lackeys, I know those suits can’t be luxurious in comparison to their regular clothes. Work from home normalized comfort, even crudeness. You can get all your weekly tasks done without changing out of your pajamas. Monday through Friday filth if your heart desires it. Who would know! And nobody can see how many piercings you have through a Zoom screen. Could slice your body open any which way you want sans repercussions.
Seems more like a pipe dream every day. In-office mandates reinforce an adherence to formality, even as our definition of what constitutes “formal” has loosened. No one in my department would show up in sweatpants or leggings. Oh god no. Jeans are the lowest we will go, and those are still debatable. They may historically present as too casual for the office, but nowadays they are the new three-piece suit. Durable. Conventional. No leisure allowed. A sign to the world that you’re Ready to Work. Piercings at least indicate a desire for individuality. Make people stop and stare as you walk by. Metal up, down, around, everywhere you want, anywhere that it can stay. But can you see it? All of it? What types do you have? Minimalist only? That’s it? Oh. Sorry. Thought you were interesting for a second.
Sad to see how the act of piercing has worked its way onto the conveyor belt of conformity. Safety pins are sick, but they don’t align with the Clean Girl aesthetic we gotta obey, you know? Mejuri or bust.
What I’m reading/watching
Light few weeks as I’m still waiting for the library to send me The Brothers Karamazov and ACOTAR #1 (I know I know but what the hell is everyone talking about! Nosiness is a disease and I am an incurable patient!!!)
Babel, R.F. Kuang
Like it a lot! Kuang gives a fascinating spin to the historical fiction/fantasy genre meld. I love how the concept of translation is the power that everybody is fighting for (i.e. you know how languages can’t be directly translated one-to-one? Like certain words/ideas only exist in the culture that they come from? Kuang takes this idiomatic liminal space and transforms it into a natural magical resource.) Combined with a background of colonial history, a plot geared towards anti-colonial resistance, and academia’s presence in both of these spheres, you’re set up with an incredibly thought-provoking, unique, and exciting book. Feel like the writing could’ve been a bit tighter (didactic/obvious/hit-over-the-head-hammering-home-the-point at certain parts), but overall would recommend.
Postcards from the Edge, dir. Mike Nichols
LOVE. LOVE LOVE LOVE. Tragicomic to the nth degree. Carrie Fisher could write, goddamnit. How is this my first Nichols film????? Absolutely stacked cast. Meryl Streep and Shirley Maclaine give perfect performances (although every time I watch Ms. Streep in a film I can see the gears turning as Katherine Hepburn allegedly once said.) Annette Bening kills her single scene. Very fun to watch Gene Hackman play a nice guy for once and Dennis Quaid play a fucking asshole, I only know him as the dad from The Parent Trap. Also made me wonder - when did twenty-first century filmmakers stop blocking? And committing to long shots? Bring those back! Right this instant!
Parisa Hashempour, "A brief history of piercings and their controversial beginnings," Dazed Magazine, March 3, 2021, https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/article/52074/1/brief-history-piercings-political-controversial-aerosmith-bdsm
Hashempour, "A brief history"
Karen Aubrey, "Body Piercing: Gender Nihilism in the 90s," Studies in Popular Culture Vol. 17 No. 2 (April 1995): 1-7, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23413700?searchText=ear+piercing&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dear%2Bpiercing%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A873bf512516b449e9b0134d1bf1908b9
product of its time, obviously. but still, look at this: "with this focus on sensory and sexual regions, the placement of body piercings seems to denote an urge to repress sensual body experiences." huh? clearly never been pierced before lol. i feel sexier every time a piercer shoots a needle through me but whatever!
Aubrey,”Body Piercing,” 4