Current mood:	happy
Current music:	I Need Some Fine Wine.. - The Cardigans
Entry tags:	body mods

Lobe-stretching fun
At long sweet last, my eBay orders finally arrived I can finally get around to stretching my lobes again. :D

Why am I stretching my lobes, you ask? For aesthetic reasons, basically. I love the way large lobes look, and you can wear the most gorgeous jewelry in them. That and it gives me something new to obsess over; I can't find a tattoo artist I trust here, and I don't plan on getting any new piercings til I have enough money to travel to a nice, industrialized country with piercing studios I can trust..

A brief explanation on how lobe stretching is (properly) done: there are several ways to stretch lobes, but I prefer using tapers. Tapers are made out of stainless steel or acrylic, and they're used to stretch piercings so they may accomodate larger-sized jewelry. The size of the jewelry is called a gauge. The smaller the number gets, the larger the gauge or the hole of the piercing is. (Here is a gauge to milimeter conversion chart, just to give you an idea of how large/small sizes are.)

Compredez? :P

When you get your lobes pierced with a gun, the gauge of the earring is around 20g or 18g. The weight of normal dangly earrings made my lobe piercings (which I've had since birth) a 16g; two months ago I stretched it to a 12g. Today I went from 12g to 8g with a taper.

My naked right lobe, at 12g


My right lobe, slick with baby oil, with the 8g taper in.
For some reason, my right lobe was being troublesome. It took ten minutes of twisting and gentle pushing to get the taper in, and it stung a little.


My naked left lobe, at 12g
(I think my left ear is prettier than my right)


My left lobe, with the 8g taper in.
I expected to have a tough time stretching this one too, but the taper went in with hardly any effort at all. o_o


Ear plugs!


My left lobe, with the ear plug in


My right lobe, with the ear plug in


And me, the proud owner of 8g lobes. :D :D

From afar you can't really tell that my lobes are stretched, which is good since I need to look like a normal human being if I ever wanted to get employed. :P At the same time, I'm slightly disappointed at how tiny they look. Where's the fun in stretched lobes if the holes aren't large and obvious?

I can't wait to get to the next size. :D :D I've already abused my poor earlobes enough today, so I'll wait a few weeks before I stretch again.