It starts with a simple touch. Professional piercer Joe Plourde tapped my nose with enormous Q-tips and pushed out the uppermost part of my inner nostril to locate the best placement on the right side of my nose. After a quick wipe down of alcohol, he marked the area with a tiny dot from a gentian-violet surgical-marker-covered toothpick. He then tilted my head to the other side in order to mark a perfectly parallel dot. “Only pressure,” he says, knowing the real pain will come soon enough.
After five minutes of talking about music and obscure ear jewelry, he asked, “you ready, man?” I reply “of course,” knowing pain is coming. He sterilized the inside and outside of my right nostril with a povidone-iodine saturated Q-tip. Plourde placed plastic piercing forceps inside my nose to support the tissue. Once the angle was set, he grabbed his needle and calmly said, “slow deep breath in.” I abided, and on his “slow deep breath out” a rush of pressure burst to my upper nostril as the needle was inserted in my nose. “A little more pressure,” he assured as he fixed the taper through my nose to back out the needle. He took the back post of the jewelry and attached it to the taper, then attached the post through the new hole in my nose. He removed the long taper and securely attached the titanium disk to the front.
Plourde is a canvas of fading tattoos and large gauge piercings. He took a step back to observe the disk-shaped art in my nose. Squinting through his thick rimmed black glasses, he nodded his head. The chunky gold danglers in his extremely gauged ears swayed. “Hell yeah!”
This is the art of piercing at Stay True Body Piercing in Newington, Connecticut, where Plourde has been working professionally for five years. Since 2014, Stay True employees have seen a positive shift in the piercing industry with safety, business opportunities, and public perception.
As the face and founder of Stay True, Alexis Silva wore an unbranded brown hoodie, skinny jeans, a gold pendant, and one simple gold nostril hoop. He named the shop after a 2008 album he once adored, by hardcore rock and hip-hop band, Deez Nutz. The album’s theme is about staying true to yourself, which Silva took to heart, as he was part of the nascent piercing and tattoo scene, where being inauthentic was frowned upon.
Safety is a priority for Silva. He described a room in his house covered in framed safety certificates. From the ear, nose, and to the infamous nipple; all piercings involve guiding metal through skin in a safe manner. Silva regrets the unsafe methods of piercing, like heating up safety needles to pierce his friends in his youth. “If you’ve ever done that, don’t tell anybody.” Prioritizing safety is one reason for the recent industry boom.
Business has been brisk. “It’s night and day,” Silva said. The industry matured from when he started. “You just went to whoever you trusted the most.” He was introduced to piercing culture through the hardcore music scene in the late 2000s. Then, professional piercers were not mainstream enough to open entire studios for the art form. When Silva worked at tattoo shops, he was often questioned if that was his full time job. “Some days I left with no money in my pocket.” Barely getting by, Silva pushed through the financial hardships to pursue something he loved doing, “even if [he] was going to be homeless.”
“I don’t think a lot of doors are going to close because of piercings.”
“I never wanted to own my own studio.” He shook his head in disbelief. Silva had the idea of a jewelry store in the front with separated piercings rooms in the back. He claimed “the industry is very old school, people don’t want switch ups.” Gatekeeping was part of the industry when he started. No benefits, no minimum wage, and no easily obtainable full time jobs. But Silva had his own vision. “I was pushing my dreams on others that didn’t share the same vision, so the only way to do it was to do it myself.” He made Stay True exactly how he imagined it. His employees get paid under all circumstances, they have benefits if they are full time, and he actively encourages others to get in the industry.
His first piercing was done by his best friend at his grandmother’s house in 2004. The decision of which ear to pierce was something Silva heavily considered as “there was the gay side and the straight side.” He went with a left earlobe piercing because back then, a single right earlobe piercing labeled a man as gay. Through weird unwritten rules about piercings, the industry grew into part of the LGBT community, more specifically gay men. “As it progressed, more women started to get involved.” This led to other subcultures embracing piercings, like bikers, gang members, and teenage boys like Silva. Piercings, especially facial piercings, were associated with rebellion. Teens and young adults were getting piercings to piss off their parents or impress their friends. This shift in the mid-2000s opened the door to a wider audience, which led to the widespread popularity of piercings today.
There’s a multitude of reasons people get pierced. Whether it’s spiritual, expressive, or just for fun, piercings should be seen as an art form, not a tool for character judgment. Nicholas Ferone has his face and ears covered in amazing diamond art. Ferone dipped his toes into the world of piercings at fourteen years old, and joined the Stay True crew as their jewelry specialist in 2022. He loves the amazing quality jewelry that is readily available, especially VS1 diamonds. Ferone stood against his workstation in an all black Adidas tracksuit, the light reflected off his diamond piercings and shimmery watch. He had nearly thirteen thousand dollars worth of jewelry on his face. Nick says piercings are “less punk or rebellious and more about fashion.” Most people simply want to decorate their body and express themselves in different ways. The main problem Ferone faces is people who still associate piercings with criminality and delinquency.
From stereotypes to ridicule, the piercing culture has endured it all. The industry still has challenges to overcome, mainly due to the way people with piercings were, and still are being portrayed in media and entertainment. Until recently, piercings were not as accepted as tattoos, which are now widely seen in professional settings. Taboo piercings, such as facial piercings and heavy modifications, are still viewed poorly in job interviews. Legally, employers are not allowed to discriminate against anyone because of the way they look, but perhaps, this is also slowly changing.
“Tattoos have gone way farther than piercings have, at least from an acceptance point of view,” says Audra Mika, a career coach at Central Connecticut State University. Her office at the Career Development Office is adorned with brochures on Handshake, Inclusively, and Parker Dewey, all major businesses that help work with college students to get jobs in the current market. Mika wears a pink blouse with simple gold hoops dangling from her ears. “It’s a personal choice. I don’t think a lot of doors are going to close because of piercings. It would be because of something that you did not bring to the table as a job seeker.” She believes “our society and job market is much more open to individuality and self expression in a way that’s not a distraction.”
Stay True employees also believe the tides are slowly, but surely, changing. Plourde has been by Silva’s side since 2012, but has been professionally piercing since 2019. “The piercings are the same, but the jewelry is changing.” He agrees the art form’s reputation is undergoing a change. The shift from “basement leather daddies with simple steel bars to high-end dainty gold jewelry” is what created the wave that the industry currently rides.
In coming years, an Austin bar nose piercing or third eye face piercing will be seen the same as a tattoo sleeve. “People still have that idea that if you look different, you aren’t intellectually capable, but if you get past the surface level judgment, you’ll see a normal person capable of anything,” Plourde says, preparing his sterilization equipment for the next customer. People are just people. The cliche “don’t judge a book by its cover” still rings true, whether the cover is stabbed with titanium, gold, or diamonds.
Jason Sabetta is a staff writer for Blue Muse Magazine.
Photos courtesy of Jason Sabetta and Audra Mika
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