Private piercings raising public alarm

We see them in ears, eyebrows, noses and tongues. They peek out provocatively from belly-baring shirts and cause us to wince when we encounter a bristling faceful at the local coffee shop. They’re body piercings, some visible, some not so much, and for the past few years they’ve been raising both eyebrows — and the occasional alarm.

Celebutante Nicole Richie’s nipple ring once set off a metal detector at an airport in Reno, Nev., resulting in an impromptu breast inspection by airport security. In March, a 37-year-old woman flying from Lubbock to Dallas, Texas, triggered a hand-held wand with her nipple jewelry and was forced to remove the piercing with pliers before the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) would allow her to board the plane.

For Alicia Cardenas, 31, the story has an all-too-familiar ring.

She was returning home from a trip to Oklahoma when she got “wanded,” says Cardenas, who owns a body piercing shop in Denver, Colo., and is president of the Association of Professional Piercers. “They get to my breasts and the thing goes off and there’s a whole bunch of hollering and a bunch of people come over.”

Cardenas told the guards about her piercings and asked if she could go to a private screening area and show them to a security agent — a la Nicole Richie — but was told she had to remove the jewelry before she could proceed any further. She did as she was told (her particular jewelry design simply required her to unscrew a bead from a barbell) and was able to make her plane in time, but the incident still rankles.

“Had I been a less confident person, I would have been a lot more shook up,” she says. “As it was, it was an absolute embarrassment to have my private life displayed.”      

Private piercings gone public
As more and more metal detectors are set up in malls, museums, courthouses, colleges, art galleries, airports and transportation hubs of every kind, people with private piercings — and especially those contemplating the procedure — are beginning to wonder if their personal beauty aesthetic means they’ll be subjected to pat-downs, pliers or the piercing gaze of a roomful of strangers.

“I participate in quite a few online communities and forums and the question about piercings and metal detectors appears on a near weekly basis,” says Tiffany Cox, a 27-year-old professional body piercer from Rocky Mount, Va. “The vast majority of people say it’s not going to be a problem, but a couple of people have had something like that happen. I’ve set off a wand before at a club but it wasn’t a big deal, they just waved me in.”

Others haven’t been as fortunate.

Stories on one tattoo/body piercing site range from a teenager whose belly piercing was detected by airport authorities in front of her parents during a vacation to Mexico (she was grounded for the duration of the trip) to a 45-year-old mom whose brand new nipple rings set off a detector during a visit to a water park with her daughter. Piercings have tripped alarms at airports, art galleries, Wal-Marts and in the case of one unfortunate college student, during a legal studies trip to a state prison (the woman had to start removing items of clothing in front of her entire class until prison security could get to the bottom of the beeping).

According to Cox, the thought of a private piercing going public can be especially alarming for her more conservative clients.

“A lot of my clients are people you wouldn’t expect to have body piercings — doctors, lawyers, teachers, preachers,” she says. “And there’s a big concern about being outed, especially for those who fly a little more or who work up in Washington, D.C., where there are a lot of public buildings with metal detectors.”

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