It's not anywhere near the most common question I get here at the Body Art topic, but it comes up pretty with some regularity. In essence the e-mails all boil down to "will you tell me how to do (whatever) piercing on myself?" There are a variety of reasons why I won't tell someone how to pierce themselves.

The majority of self-piercings requests are from teenage girls who want to pierce their own noses. I know how that can be. When I was a teenager it was all about getting your parents to let you have a second earring in one ear. Noses hadn't even come into vogue yet and there were no such things a body piercing shops. Almost all ear piercing did happen at home then.

One thing people might not know is that I am not a qualified body piercer. Actually, most folks think I am an actual tattoo artist, and I'm not one of those either. I am a writer and an extreme body art enthusiast. I've now been interested in body art for almost 30 years. That's a lot of time to learn a lot of things, but reading about stuff and having actual training are very different.

But do I know how to do body piercings? Well, actually, yes I do. I've read just about anything I've ever been able to find on the subject, I have past experience as a trained and certified First Responder, I have sex educator training and I have thirty body piercings of my own. One of the magazines in my collection is an 80s-90s piercing publication that had a regular column on how various body piercings were done, and included all necessary medical details. And I do have training and experience in play piercing.

So, if you actually kinda know how to do piercings, why won't you tell people when they e-mail you and ask? My number one reason for not telling people how to do piercing on themselves is that we live in a society of lawyers. I feel that since my childhood, there has been a trend of people taking less and less responsibility for themselves and putting the burden "someplace else." For me to provide advice, no matter how good it might be, it wouldn't protect me from being sued by someone's angry parents. Things like anatomy, placement and sterile-technique can't be taught via e-mail either.

From the amount of e-mails that I get where someone went ahead and pierced themselves, and then panicked and wrote to me asking for advice, I apparently don't need to be encouraging anyone.

To learn more about piercing, you might like Body Piercing: A Medical Dictionary, Bibliography, And Annotated Research Guide To Internet References by Icon Health Publications.

For body piercing aftercare, you might like Tattoo Goo Deluxe Tattoo & Piercing Care Kit or X-Pression & Blue Wave Piercing Aftercare Kit