I only have one tattoo and three piercings in each ear, and my coworkers think I'm nuts. One of them came in and ranted in total shock about this guy she saw with stretched lobes. I'm planning on getting a labret eventually and maybe some others. I'm going to be a midwife, and she said that if I walked into her room, she would refuse to allow me to be her midwife. What the hell is that? How does the fact that I (will) have a facial piercing equal that I'm not good at my job? Of course, this is the same woman who said that she would refuse to allow me to be her midwife if she saw me wearing a pentacle...
Some people are just close minded. It sucks I have it happen alot I have 5 tats and in my field I get weird looks. Don't let it bother you.
she sounds like a real idiot. i can't stand people like that. having tattoos and piercings has nothing to do with what kind of person you are. to be honest, i've watched every day people and creative people with piercings and tattoos work and people with the creativity are usually better. why? because we HAVE creativity. obviously. and creativity helps in any job or any other environment. really though, i get those looks often. some men won't look my way because i have tattoos and i'm like whatever... go out with the blonde bimbo skank have fun. i'd rather date someone with an open mind. and alot of bitches give me looks but hey... we all know bitches have no creativity so whatever.
Hey, what the heck, let your freak flag fly. Who cares what other people think. Many people will judge your book by the cover if you are different than them no matter how. Some of the worst judgement I ever got was about 10 years ago from so called hippie freaks. I was offered a teaching position in Papua New Guinea so I cut my hair and took out all the rings from my ears and eyebrow. I don't recall being treated so poorly ever. So who cares.
Molly, I have to confess that I used to have a horizontal clit hood piercing. It migrated, but I'm getting a triangle to replace it. I hope this knowledge doesn't strain our relationship.
That is soo fucked up. However, so many people have preconceived notions about people based on appearance. The only advice I can offer is to be true to one self. I changed my hair for jobs: removed my braids, cut my dreads and I was still treated shitty. The shit you have encountered prevented me from getting piercings and tattoos I desired.,
It is a shame that we, all of us, are always judged by appearance or other things contributing to a first impression. This will most likely not be the last time during your life you will be unjustly judged by how you look to others. This happens to all of us all the time, it's just that people feel entitled to insult you because you have sometihing that is an Overt Statement about how you feel about yourself. Most of the time when we are judged by others we never know it. I took a beating a few years back because of the way I looked to some others, and what they concluded it said about the kind of Human Being I was. Don't let them get you down, they will never change their narrow mindedness, so make sure they can't change you. PS: How is Taylor doing? I hope he is better.
It's funny just HOW many people have piercings and tattoos now....I find that the girls who are skinny blonde types don't get the same ridicule that I personally do or other people who look more like me. When I was in junior high, there was this one girl who decided that she hated the way I looked in general....the way I had my hair dyed, my percings, my clothes, my weight, everything. She confronted me on a couple occasions about this. One was in Social Class and I raised my hand to answer a question. She pipes up at the other end of the room and yells, "YOU'RE TOO UGLY TO HAVE AN OPINION!" The class laughed, including the teacher, and everyone carried on. Then, another time was at a fundraiser for our grad. I wasn't feeling well and was sitting in the hall way in the school with a few of my friends. She walks up with a few of her friends and says, out of nowhere, "you know, you need to die. You are just too ugly to exist. I hate you. You piss me off. I hate the way you look and I think that you need to burn in hell." I sat there totally stunned. A friend of mine yelled, "bitch," back to her, and she turned around thinking it was me and said, "Don't you DARE speak to someone like ME like that again! Rot in hell you dirty bitch." It took me a while to get over that. Especially since I had never really even talked to her before. She was new to our school and decided that she hated me the minute that she saw me. My point? Some people are just too rude to see past their own faces. Her comments never stopped me from dressing the way I like, getting more piercings and dying my hair all weird. I still made lots of friends and had fun. There's always going to be people there who want to make you feel like shit because you don't look the way that they think you should. I'm going to school to be a nurse, then a midwife as well, and I'm kinda worried about getting patients for my piercings and stuff....but at the same time, there ARE people out there who are looking for people like us, too. I don't want to come across as a person who judges other's by their appearances, either, but for the most part, if there's a tattooed midwife and an untattooed one, naturally I'm going to think that the other one is a bit more open minded. That wouldn't be my sole decision maker on who I would pick, but I would probably feel a little more comfortable with that tattooed, percied one. But that's just me.
Um... Yes it does..... It means that you are the kind of person who chooses to modify your body. When I see somebody walking around with a generic tattoo, like the overly-common design that every bimbo in town has on her lower back, I tend to assume they are sheep. After all, why not permanently modify yourself to fit in with a temporary fad? And, yes, I have certain assumptions about the sort of person who would choose to do a full sleeve or even a full shirt tattoo, as I do about the sort of person who would choose to have their nose, lip, eyebrow, and whatever else pierced multiple times. That's not to say that I have a problem with body modification. I've seen some people look very classy with a dainty nose ring. I would happily get a tattoo if it were something meaningful to me. But this is something you choose to do to yourself. This isn't your skin color or eye color or sexual orientation. Anyone who doesn't judge people based on the choices they make in life is an idiot, especially when deciding whether to trust that person to perform as important a service as being one's midwife. Edit -- to clarify, I don't think one tattoo (assuming it's tastefully located) and multiple ear piercings is excessive. But, when a person has more metal in their face than I have in my changepurse, I have to question what they're compensating for.
I'm still not getting what body modification has to do with how good of a midwife I'll be. Some people think that any piercings - even simple ear studs - are wrong. Different people think different things. It doesn't change the fact of how good I am at my job. If I wanted to, I could split my tongue, shave my head, and tattoo my head purple, and I would be the exact same midwife as if I had no mods whatsoever. The only difference is in narrow-minded people that think people with "too much" modification are bad and can't possibly be good at any job whatsoever because they're just worthless and lazy and do nothing but deal drugs.
When I'm ready to look for a midwife, I will be looking for one with a similar outlook to mine. That means that we be on the same page in regard to when to call in the doc for an emergency C-section, whether I will have to argue for/against drugs (for pain or to induce), whether any religious crap will be involved, etc. If someone is judging against you as a midwife because you have your ears pierced, that probably means that they have other expectations that they want their midwife to fit, beyond being technically skilled -- such as either the full on all natural whatever or more religious than the average person in the US, depending on their reasons for disliking your piercings. My assumption would be that someone with a lot of body modifications (beyond what you mentioned having in this thread) would be quicker to accept interventions (drugs to induce, quicker to turn to C-section) than someone with a more natural look. Whether that's fair or not, that would be my first thought. Why get piercings or tattoos if you're not trying to communicate to others something about yourself?
I've found it to be the other way around - those with mods are usually much less likely to accept the status quo of birth culture, just as they are less likely to accept the status quo of personal appearance. BTW, my tattoo is rarely visible and my non-ear piercing is never visible (genital). They are for ME. They are personal to me and me only, and I don't care if no one else ever sees them. It's obvious you know very little about body modifications and the reasons therefor.
But when I compare someone with a lot of mods to someone who is so granola that they have never once dyed their hair and grows their own organic food, who do you think will seem more likely to go for intervention first? I apparently should have been more clear with what I meant by all natural. I'm comparing two groups that don't go for status quo, because I tend to assume that anyone going for the status quo will become a nurse or ob/gyn instead of a midwife. Again, as a point of clarification -- why get piercings or tattoos in visible locations if not to communicate something. How are any prospective clients going to judge you on your clit piercing or on a tattoo they never see? On the other hand, I would laugh in the face of someone who had tons of metal on their face and tattoos on thier hands if they tried to tell me that those mods were just for him/herself. No, I don't know that much about body modification. I had my ears pierced once, but let those close over. If I ever get a tattoo, it will be as a sort of rite of passage while doing fieldwork in Borneo (I study anthropology), in which case it will be a highly visible marker of having been accepted into the group I will be working with. For the people I plan to work with, tattoos are explicitly intended to communicate group membership, prestige, travel experiences, etc. However, I know more about body modification than most of the people I interact with on a regular basis, and I bet I know a hell of a lot more about it than your coworker who judges you on just having your ears pierced multiple times.
Remember, no one can judge others without first judging themselves. It is best to ignore the judges because if we believe them, we allow them to control our confidence.
Not so. Many people I know, myself included, who have percings have all opted to have our kids naturally with midwives who we can identify with, many of them being pierced and tattooed. On the other hand, there's other women I know who have never dyed their hair or let a needle come near them who ran for the csections and drugs the minute they could. When I had Leane, I used an OBGYN who I will never go back to. All the people in his office including him were au natural without a single mod. Never met a more snub-nosed bunch who completely favoured sections and drugs. I had to fight NOT to have a section. When I was in the hospital, the only nurse who vouched for me was a lady with tattoos and looked a little different from the rest of the people there.
