Right ear piercing gay
Why Did We Develop Up Thinking a Piercing in the Right Ear Was Gay?
On the playground, it was a truth so firmly established that defying it meant social suicide: If you have an earring in your right ear, it means you’re gay. We accepted it as gospel and never questioned its validity.
It may have been the subtle homophobia of my Illinois community in the ’90s. But as I grew up, it seemed love everyone I met, no matter their place of beginning, knew and understood the earring code, as arbitrary as it seems.
It was even solidified in the New York Times: A 1991 report said homosexual men “often [wore] a single piece of jewelry in the right ear to indicate sexual preference.” In 2009, the Times covered it yet again, in TMagazine: “the rule of thumb has always been that the right ear is the gay one,” the author wrote about his own piercing journey.
Historically speaking, the truth is more complex. Earrings on guys have signified many things over the years, such as social stature or religious affiliation. In his book The Naked Man: A Study of the Male Body, Desmond Morris explains that earrings have indicated wisdom and kindness in the stretched earlobes of the Buddha, while pirat
Right and Wrong
When I was an eighteen-year-old freshman at Mizzou, way back in 1990, I decided to flaunt my newfound independence from my parents by getting an ear pierced. What a rebel I was! If getting a piercing while sitting in a comfy chair at Claire’s Boutique in the Columbia Mall doesn’t prove to your parents and the rest of the world that you are a certifiable bad boy, then nothing will.
Travis Naughton
When my dad first saw my modern earring, he rolled his eyes and laughed. When my mom saw it, she said she could have saved me the ten bucks and done it herself. She favored the security pin, ice cube, and raw potato method—which, in hindsight, would have given me much more street cred than a trip to a boutique.
Nevertheless, I’ve worn an earring for the beat part of three decades now. Kids at school often ask me why I have an earring, and hoping to enlighten them, I always exclaim that boys can have earrings, too. Then they inevitably ask why I only have one ear pierced.
Until last week, my respond has been, “Lots of men own one earring. It’s just what some men did support when I was young.” Men enjoy Harrison Ford, Michael Jordan, and Ed Bradley wore one earring in tho
Right ear, right queer?
David Babby explores the mystical and idiosyncratic world of piercing etiquette.
On a particularly grey, drizzly Saturday morning my friend set off to get her ear pierced. The decision had been made the darkness before amidst several other similarly serious lifestyle alterations.
The money had been counted out. Support had been garnered. After much intense discussion, the prettier nostril was identified and noted.
I was a bit late and arrived just as my friend was being lead in to a back room. The woman in charge of her had a excellent few piercings, which was reassuring, and there was a crumpled bag of Meanies in the bin which showed that this was a fun place to work.
“So,” I said, leaning against the door, “Which nostril is the gay nostril?” To be honest, I consideration I’d been post-gay hilarious, but piercing lady was not much impressed. “There is none,” she said drily and reached for her marker.
What I had not realised at the time was that my friend’s sister had already asked the alike question before I’d got there and got a considerably terser response along the lines of: “That is ignorance. There is no gay nostril. If you are gay, your whole nose is ga
Right=GAY
Left=Straight
Both=Normal
Male #2- "WHAT?! Dude, that's the gay ear!"
Male #1- "I know that."
Male #2- ...*slowly walks away*...
Male #1- NO Stay COME BACK...... I LOVE YOU!!!!
Person 2: bro that’s the lgbtq+ ear, you know that right?
Person 1: I thought you knew I was gay? Why else would I pierce my right ear only?
Person 2: oh… I did not. Welp.. good for you, see ya around.
Person 1: wait can I get your #?
Person 2: ummm…. try Grindr I’m straight sorry.