Hey hi hello just thinkin about Claire’s now and can I go off for a second? :)
PIERCING GUNS SHOULD BE FULLY FUCKING BANNED
Here’s my personal reasons for being 100% willing to die on this hill :)))
I absolutely adore piercings, I have several professional piercings on both my ears and face and they’ve healed beautifully, but I have two piercings that are a very different story. The first piercings I ever got, my bottom lobe piercings, are from Claire’s. I was about 5 years old when I got the first set on Halloween, which in hindsight is very thematically appropriate for the horror story that followed.
My sister and I both got our piercings at the same time and both had to get them repierced around 2-3 times. I don’t even fully remember each horrible death they had, I remember watching my sisters ear almost grow fully around her piercing, I remember screaming in agony as my mom pried the awful lock backs off my unrecognizably bloody crusted over ears. Infection after infection we still just blamed ourselves and tried again. Even after going to the doctor almost every time no one ever told us that the piercing gun was the problem, or that the advice the employees gave us was the exact opposite of what we should be doing. We didn’t know any better, and that’s exactly what they prey on.
Children more than any other demographic are targeted by companies like Claire’s and as long as they’re allowed to continue using piercing guns children and parents who don’t know any better will continue to go there and get hurt. It doesn’t just end in bad piercings, the infections I got put me in some of the worst pain I had ever felt in my life at that point, and left me with genuine trauma that still affects me to this day. After every horrible infection from Claire’s leading to an immediate grizzly death for the piercing, it’s taken everything in me to adjust to problems with professionally done piercings not being a death sentence. Any time they show even the slightest sign of infection or irritation I almost have a panic attack. I’m not squeamish in the slightest but if one of my piercings starts bleeding while I’m cleaning them I get so light headed and sick I feel like I’m going to faint. The short term and long term harm these piercings do isn’t a fate I would wish on anyone much less a literal toddler, but that’s exactly what will continue to happen as long as piercing guns stay legal.
So yeah if anyone has had similar experiences please don’t hesitate to add on, there seriously isn’t enough people talking about this. Especially if anyone else has experienced any sort of psychological impact from it, I haven’t heard anyone else talk about it but surely that kind of pain and stress at such a young age would affect you right? I can’t be the only one this has happened to.
