Skin puckers slightly as the needle slices the skin once, twice, maybe a third time. Her sharp intake of breath as the tip finally pierces skin is the only sound in the room.

A small opening is made in her flesh and a small oval disk with a jewel on the end is slipped into her skin. Just as she forgets to breathe, piercing apprentice Stacey Fitzpatrick looks at the jeweled stud jutting from between the freckles on her arm, she grins.

Seeing a jeweled stud next to an eye or a bar through the backside of a wrist is becoming commonplace nowadays, including even more intricate forms such as the laced corset adorning women’s backs, or the multiple bars on the collarbone or back of the neck. These dermal anchors and surface piercings are taking hold in a growing number of college bodies, demonstrating the “human’s instinct” to gravitate toward a needle and experiment with jewelry placement.

“I think that human beings have this inherent instinct to modify their bodies in some way for beautification,” says Chad Williams, manager and master piercer for Tribal Rites in Fort Collins. “You look at all the tribes that ever existed … all piercings today has its roots in indigenous culture.”

Fitzpatrick decided to get an anchor because she wanted to be able to tell her customers how it felt.

“It’s an eerie feeling, that’s the only way to explain it,” Fitzpatrick says. “It doesn’t hurt really … it’s just strange. It’s a lot less painful than other piercings I have gotten, and I don’t think it’s as painful as a bee sting even.”

Anchors don’t draw people for their lack of pain, but mainly for their unique look.

“I thought, especially because I wanted to get three, that anchors were a good idea,” says Sarah Pollard, a senior English major. “You can screw off the top and change how it looks, and I thought that it was just more original than other piercings.”

Pollard already has her tongue double-pierced, and her lip and belly button pierced. She chose dermal piercings next because of the different style and the freedom of design it gave her.

“I have three anchors in a triangle on my forearm,” Pollard says. “Part of me sees the triangle as an intriguing structure, and I have two brothers, so the triangle symbolizes our bond.”

The anchors gave Pollard the ability to modify her body in a unique way because of their design and versatility.

A dermal anchor is different from a regular piercing in that it is a small, oval disk inserted underneath the skin, with a jewel or solid colored ball attached. This allows just one jewel to be visible above the skin rather than two jewels at each end of a bar, such as a surface piercing entails.

After the jewelry has been inserted, the skin grows relatively quick back over the incision, leaving the tissue underneath to heal. The oval disk contains three small holes, which the tissue then grows into and around, anchoring the piercing in place.

“It’s not like a medical procedure,” Williams says. “It’s just a simple thing. It takes me 10 minutes to do one, same as other piercings.”

There are two procedures to insert a dermal, one with three small incisions of a needle and the disk slipped underneath the skin or a dermal/biopsy punch where the tissue is actually punched out and removed before inserting the jewelry.

Dermal peircings cost more than most piercings because of the jewelry and procedure.

“I like them [anchors] more than traditional piercings because I look at it as more of an investment,” Pollard says. “When I got them I was so excited, thinking ‘I’m going to have these for a long time.’”

Anchors tend to be favored over surface piercings on those who have both, or who are debating between the two.

“I think anchors look better,” Fort Collins resident Alisha Ayala says. She sports two anchors on one eyebrow and a surface piercing along the other. “The surface piercing catches on everything. These [the anchors] do, too, but since they healed in basically three days it’s not quite as bad.”

Dermal anchors also incite a myth surrounding removal. An anchor is not permanent. It can be removed and it does not have to be done through a doctor.

“You can cut the skin with a needle and just take it [the dermal] out,” Williams says. “I hear a lot of people saying, ‘Well you have to use a scalpel,’ but I’ve found it’s about the same as getting it in.”

The surface piercing can be removed in the same way as traditional piercings, just by removing the earring.

Besides the anxiety surrounding the permanence of anchors, the piercings are no different than any others available; even cleaning is the same as “normal” piercings.

“Like always, use salt water,” Williams says. “The cleaners that some places manufacture are chemicals and that’s not good on any piercing. Salt water is really the only good thing for a puncture wound, something that takes more than a few days to heal.”

And there is always the chance of rejection or migration with every piercing, no matter the body placement.

“Your body rejects foreign objects, and with piercings that are close to the surface there’s always a high chance of migration,” Williams says. “Like when your body has a splinter that you couldn’t get out, it is slowly pushed out over time. Anchors are better [than surface piercings] because there’s not as much chance of rejection.”

Rejection cannot be prevented; it is merely a reaction by the body to a foreign object.

With every piercing, there will be irritation of the skin. An anchor heals easily over top, as skin is the fastest to heal forming a slight scab. Underneath, tissue is slowly healing around the piercing.

If the piercing is red and swollen, that does not mean it is infected. An infection involves bacteria that made its way into the open wound. If a piercing is healing it has a tendency to be red and swollen, even tender to the touch, but it does not necessarily constitute an infection.

“I see that a lot, where people think it’s an infection and don’t know how to handle it,” Williams says. “Just keep using salt water, and do not take out the jewelry. If you take out the jewelry the skin closes over and can sometimes trap the bacteria or irritant under the skin.”

Whether you opt for “normal” piercings like earlobe, cartilage, belly button or nose piercings, there are more options than there were before. You can pierce just about everything and anything to reflect your individuality – whatever that may be.

Tags: Volume 5 Issue 1

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Features, Hot Button. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.