Entry #2

(First off, a HUGE thank you to all who had commented on my first entry, it was very encouraging. :) Please please please continue to do so for the rest of my entries if possible, and for those mysterious folks, could it be possible to let me know who you are? Because it keeps me awake at night, wondering who helped me. Thanks again so so much, I really appreciate it, and will continue to send good luck and karma along your way.)

Today, my post will be based on the article, "Pretty Scary" (Or "Busy Body", based on the cover of the papers), the "Mind Your Body" section of the Straits Times, dated September 11, 2008.

This article is about piercings, be it facial piercings or body piercings. According to the article, teenagers are into facial and body piercing because it is cool and trendy. However, doctors adviced against having too many piercings because the risk of infection will be high, whenever foreign objects (be it rings, tattoos and even eyelash implants) are introduced under the skin's surface. They also advices us on how to care for our piercings.

The reporter who wrote this article obviously has her own interpretation on piercings. She interviewed several teenagers, and even had a seperate interview on a 21 year-old young adult (the adult as seen on the picture above) about his feelings on piercings. Her conclusion? Teenagers love piercings, and do not think of the long term effects of piercings. Perhaps it is her past experience with meeting teenagers with piercings, or perhaps there is a cultural difference in which people with multiple piercings are seen in a different light.

However, is it fair for her to say that? How many teenagers did this reporter interview and quote in this article? I did a check and found out that it is a grand total of three, including the young adult on the cover. Suffice to say, she really does make a lot of teenagers with piercings sound like mindless young sheeps who are just blindly following the trend of having multiple piercings because it seems "cool".

Firstly, I would like to introduce the definition of perception: It is the process of selecting, organising and intepreting information to make sense of the world around us. One factor that affects the selection process is the mass media (i.e.: the newspaper from which this article originates). This article labels most teenagers with piercings as people who rush into decisions without consideration for their future; as one psychiatrist said, "...don't care about how their body modifications affect their future job prospects or how people view them..."

Imagine the horror of some parents after they read this article, and they have their own children coming up to them, asking them if they can have their ears, nose or lips pierced. How would you feel, if you're the parent?

Imagine if you are the owner of a huge company, and you saw someone with piercings come for a job interview. After reading the article, you might associate people with piercings as people who do not care about the long term effect, or consequences of what they do. Would you employ such a person? Of course, I am not saying that everyone are influenced so easily like that, but many people are, to a certain extent, definitely influenced by the mass media and the environment around them.

I myself have a very, very few number of piercings on my ears, and I can understand why teenagers want to pierce their body parts: some enjoy the pain, some wants to know how painful the process of piercing is, for the sake of experience, and some are just plain vain. Some piercings could even be symbolic. Personally it is more of an experience, and of course for vanity's sake too, but I definitely do think of the consequences of doing such things on my body. I did consider that I might grow out of those piercings one day, and if I do, I know that the piercings done on my ears are reversible and they will simply heal over time, if I do care for them properly. Unfortunately, tattoos, unlike piercings, are mostly irreversible, and that is why I have not, and will not, in the near future, doddle a dragon on my forehead.

There could be a possiblity that what the reporter was trying to convey was different from what I have interpreted; I could be overly-defensive. Language and words can be subjected to miscommunication. They are very arbitrary; subject to the individual's judgement. There could be multiple interpretations to what this reporter has to say about piercings in general; perhaps she sincerely cares for people with piercings and wishes to convey her well wishes to them, by telling them how to care for their piercings. Perhaps she wants to point out to the general public that people with piercings are just teenagers who are into following the latest trends, and there is nothing particularly intimidating about them. There could even be distortions of the words used in the article, that I have misinterpreted due to the different reference groups that the reporter and I have believe in. I could be a great believer in the therapeutic effects of body piercings, for example, and the reporter could believe that body piercings is never healthy for anyone.

Such things are barriers to communications, and in order to eliminate such barriers, both of us should engage in perceptive checking frequently.

In short, I do not agree with the way she has written this article, and I feel that it was unfairly written. If she has interivewed more teenagers, or done a survey, I could be more convinced.