What can you do if your daughter went ahead and pierced her navel to be able to wear fancy, trendy, belly button rings? You had already warned her of all the awful possible allergic and secondary effects such body piercing could bring, without mentioning the possible infections, tearing, etc.
You don’t believe it is nice to pierce; it gives you a savage mental picture of jungle dwellers and their funny jewellery on noses, ears, necks, etc. Well, there is nothing you can do now. She already pierced her navel. Just hope that the tattoo worker was a clean, honest and professional one, and that no consequences will follow.
Why do young people crave piercings like this? Is it another rebellious trend? For us baby boomers, who tried to go all natural and organic, piercing was not an option. We didn’t even pierce our daughter’s ears at birth, like our mothers did. We thought this should be a personal choice and not one imposed by the parents or society. Well, maybe this is one of the answers. We didn’t pierce their ears and now they crave piercings. This is always the paradox of human eternal discontentment.
For centuries, women of many Asian and African communities flaunted beautiful nose jewellery, multiple earrings in their ears, etc. But piercing other parts of the body was not part of any specific culture or common like it is today. Some western fringe demographics –like punks, bikers, sadomasochist’s minorities, etc.—were seen or known of wearing these piercings in other body parts, but it was not until the late 90s that belly button rings went mainstream.
Where did this belly button ring fashion came from? On one hand, it was most likely from the insatiable search for new trends in order to sell new products and make new money for the jewelry niche corporations.
Some say, (Wikipedia) that a famous model named Christy Turlington –during a fashion show in London—showed publicly her navel piercing for the first time. Then the Aerosmith music video song “Cryin”, popularized Alicia Silverstone’s navel piercing to the youths of the world. Easy to be concealed by the clothing, many young teenagers managed to pierce their navels without being “discovered” by their parents.
There is a huge belly button rings industry that has recently developed, and countless beauty shops, magazines and online shops sell unique designs and fancy belly button rings jewellery made of all kinds of metals, sizes and designs. There is something for every budget, from simple studs to complicated dangling –earring looking—belly button rings.
Gold (yellow and white gold), titanium, stainless steel, and sterling silver are the favourite metals for belly button rings. Many people are allergic to even small amounts of nickel in alloys with other metals –which is very frequent in earrings and other jewellery–, which makes your skin red, itchy and painful and can lead to infection if scratched.
True, those beautifully designed belly button rings look beautiful on a young, lean and tanned female body. It is not difficult to figure out when to wear fancy belly button rings. The perfect place to show off their navel jewellery is definitely in the beach. Some of these belly button rings even glow in the dark and are perfectly suited for disco nights.
If your daughter has a belly button ring, don’t panic or freak out. Just go along with it the best you can –there is not much else you can do anyway–, and try to compliment the beauty of it: “Wow, that looks so nice on you!”. Maybe a casual, simple reminder of the hygiene and safety measures you know are needed could also be mentioned, and leave it at that. She will be shocked that you don’t make a big scene, or order her to take it off immediately like many parents do.
It is my personal experience –after many years of parenting teenagers—that if there is not much opposition from parental authority, generally the trend fades and the youth disposes of their belly button rings and/or other piercings by their own will, as they grow up or take on more responsibility. “If mom likes it, maybe I should take it off.”
