I’m not one to make rash, rebellious decisions (usually).
However, last week, in a spur of the moment, I got my nose pierced. Well, I say spur of the moment, it was over the course of a few days deliberation. Which is pretty spur of the moment for me.
I’ve been considering doing something to alter my appearance for a while now, and finally settled on one of the smaller, subtler options. The reason for this was because I wanted to do something to take control of my body. Sounds really stupid, but Trich (which I spoke about and explained in this previous blog post) has made me feel as if I do not have control of my own body and how I look. So getting this done was my way of taking my body and my actions back.
After speaking with a few friends and their experiences with piercings, and watching numerous YouTube videos that made me slightly cringe (I’m not scared of needles, but it’s not the nicest thing to look at, am I right?), both myself and a close friend decided to go together. This is the finished result:
We went to a well-known, popular piercing studio in our local town that we know is clean and safe. We went in, filled out some forms about medical stuff/age/consent/etc, paid (each piercing was £15 for our noses, not sure if this is especially cheap or expensive but this paid for the procedure and the jewelry!), and went into the back room.
The room was like a hospital with a funny bed-thing and lots of bins and wipes and clean stuff. Which is what you would hope for in a place that’s gonna be sticking needles in you, to be honest. My friend wanted to go first, as she was extremely nervous and wanted to get it over with. I said fair enough. I was slightly nervous too. We’d chosen our jewelry beforehand, both little diamond-y things, mine silver, hers blue. Our piercer-person (that’s definitely the technical term) cleaned our noses with an anti-bac wipe (tip: don’t wear foundation/face makeup, makes it much more annoying) and drew on with pen where he was going to shove the needle, which probably looked a little something like this with the jewelry attached:
We were told to lie down on the bed (and because we were both absolute wimps, were clinging onto each others hands like there was no tomorrow. I’ll admit, I was shaky). The piercer then took some tong-like things (more technical terminology right here) to hold up the side of our nose. The tongs had a gap in to see the dot he’d made, and after visibly cleaning the needle, then promptly proceeded to make a hole in my face.
I won’t lie to you, it did hurt. I know that’s the main thing everyone wants to know. It hurt. On a scale of 1-10, maybe scored a 6.5? It felt like a sharp pinch with long nails for a second, like an old auntie who pinches your cheek too hard with her claws. Attached the end of the needle was a thin clear tube which was then pulled through the hole, and attached to this was the jewelry. This was pulled through, and hooked round (it has a hook shape at the end to keep it in place). And that was that! Done! Freshly made face-hole, job done. My eyes watered like absolute crazy, which is very normal for a facial piercing (but annoying for my makeup).
We were given a sheet telling us how to care for our noses, but told by the piercer that as long as we didn’t touch the pierced area or the jewelry too much and kept it as clean as possible, we didn’t really have to do anything else. Nose piercings often heal very quickly and aren’t a problem zone for infections and such. So we were pretty much good to go!
For a few hours afterwards my nose ached quite a bit and stung, which is again, normal and expected. The only problems I encountered was after I got home and a few days after, occasionally knocking the stud or my nose would result in the stud coming our half way, and a lot of pain and struggling to push it back into place. However, apart from that, so far there has been no problems!
I’m very happy with how it turned out and am still shocked I ever got it done as it is not my thing at all. But I think it looks really cute and I do not regret it! If you have any questions about my experience or piercings, feel free to ask however I am not an expert!
Thank you for reading and I hope you are all doing great! Much love.
Jessica G Allen 