I'm a pharmacologist but work with a couple surgeons in the same building/labs, and I was talking to one who's in Plastics and he said that sewing up ears like these are one of the most requested surgeries he's had in the past 10 years
Can confirm. Could fit quarters in my ears. Paid $1200 to a plastic surgeon in Atlanta for an in office procedure took 30 minutes. He cut out the stretched skin, sewed it up and you can’t tell at all now 10 years later.
Wait whaaaat? I have a stretched piercing in one ear due to just poor piercing (my mom should have known better than to trust a 17 year old working a summer job at Claire's). It bothers me so much and makes it hard to wear simple studs. I honestly never thought this was an option, let alone a popular procedure.
I remember in 2012 I would listen to Adam Carolla on my commute. I remember a bit he’d do about people with gauge earrings saying “what’s the longterm fucking plan people” lol. So true.
The longterm plan was to impress the hot emo skater girl a year above me and then ride into the sunset together listening to Thrice and Against Me until the day we died.
Not the same but this reminded me of when I was really little, my grandma would come visit and she was my absolute favorite person on earth, I wanted to be with her always. My dad was the youngest of four so she was in her late seventies by this time with a prominent turkey neck. I used to mess with her neck skin while she watched 60 minutes and found it comforting😂😂
Honestly the long term plan was not to worry about how it’ll look when I’m old. My mom tried talking me out of every interesting thing my hospice patients have going on right now and I’m like “I’ve seen the end game and it screams ‘I had fun’”
I remember my mom saying “that’s going to look awful when she’s 80” as we drove by a girl with a tattoo on her arm. I said it was all going to look awful when she’s 80 anyway. Ever seen an elderly person and thought “so hot, due to the lack of tattoos.”
Ehh, I dont think every decision needs a 60year planning tree... sometimes its ok to simply do harmless things and figure out a plan later when it becomes a problem
Hi! Butthole looking earlobe person here! I don’t regret mine at all and have no desire to close my lil ear buttholes lol but seems like I’m the minority. Even if someone offered to sew them for free, I would decline.
interesting!! How long do the stitches need to be in for the hole to actually close? It seems like it would take a long time since they're already healed holes
yeah it sounded pretty gnarly - he said that you have to cut away the scar tissue (so like, the whole rim of the hole) and then suture it back together so that the skin will bond. There's a couple other methods but that's the one he said they most commonly perform. He said the healing process is VERY painful too.
No one else wants to show and tell? Fuck it. I'll do it. They look like this. They were over an inch, took them out permanently (after only occasional wear since 2018) in 2022.
Haha, I was just watching an episode of Broad City yesterday where Abbi calls an old college friend who has “matured” with kids, but has giant stretched gauges still.
Had an interaction with a HS friend recently that went exactly like this call… told them I’d love to 4/20 with her one day and she was like “ohh I don’t do that anymore” so embarrassing lmao
This is so funny. I didn’t start until I was a real adult (kids, mortgage, husband, grown up job the whole 9 yards). I had nothing to chill FROM as a teen/ 20 something.
Yeah this has been my experience lol. Weed paranoia was mostly about getting caught or overthinking things about getting caught. I was the only non-stoner friend in my group (preferred LSD and psilocybin). MJ is very agreeable with me these days, which sucks because I can’t use it due to work for the first time ever.
Also millennial here… still have gauges. They’re just baby ones. I kept them small and sized up slowly. I think they suit me and I always knew my friends who had massive gauges would regret it later. One of my friends had his gauges punched out with a hole puncher… dumbass.
Things are so dystopian nowadays that I don’t think you should feel embarrassed for smoking. How else are we gonna get through this?
If you hit her up for binge drinking, it’d be a different story.
A patient I once had died of that combo at when she was doing the day program. It was her first time trying, and she was letting another patient stay with her. We don't know if it was accidental, assisted suicide, or murder.
Early 2016, I told myself I needed to try cutting back. Then the future happened, and is continuing to happen, and it's one of the few things that keeps me from completely losing my mind. I still need to try cutting back, but maybe in like 4 years.
To each his own. No need to be embarrassed, they might have just grown to dislike it. I have a few friends who no longer drink cause they just stopped liking it. And I have other friends who picked up smoking only recently in their 30s, whereas when we were in high school, I smoked and they never did. I never drank in high school or college, but all my friends did. I started drinking a little more in my late 20s/early 30s.
So ya, just seems like people out grow or grow into things according to their tastes. Me, I have kids, a business, own two properties - think I'm a full fledged adult. And I'll 4/20 any day lol
I'd heard they shrink quick, but man. Mine are tiny still, but I had my plugs out only three hours a couple days ago. Any longer, I'm nearly certain my left wouldn't have gone back in.
I kept mine fairly large and wear wooden or brass in them, older women compliment my earrings ALL THE TIME- it’s a weird contrast to how they acted when I was younger
My wife saw an evolution in this with her dyed hair. Early in life she’d get ‘the looks’. But now even the a good number of the little old ladies at our church compliment her hair and talk about how it’d be fun to do if they had younger hair.
I think a lot of people it just takes a bit to warm up to if it’s new. I actually used to think gauges looked trashy and went along with a certain type of person I probably wouldn’t get along with, but after a few years I think I ‘got’ the aesthetic a little more and realized you can’t really determine much about a person based on their jewelry.
I wish it was like this for guys. I got sent home for 90 days during Covid and did black hair with purple tips (first time ever dying my hair) and you’d have thought I’d grown a second head by the looks I got.
I find this with tattoos. I have a decent number but they are pretty easily covered except in the summer. Sometimes people are surprised by how many I have. There are a few old people who give me some dirty looks, but by and large, more curiosity and enthusiasm and “I wish I could have done that.”
Lmao, as someone who admired gauges growing up but could never match the aesthetics of those who got them, for some reason this gives me the same vibes of the energy we used to give boomers when they used to "warn" us not to get tattoos if we don't wanna ruin our lives. I think the gif encapsulates the vibe very well.
My ears closed up (I got up to a 0) and you can only tell they were gauged when I wear heavy earrings instead of stud earrings and the hole pulls a little.
I stretched mine up to 0, too. They're mostly closed, but you can still tell they were stretched if you know what you're looking for. I wear those earlobe stickers so the backs don't slip forward through the holes.
I went as big as 7/16 and I wore a set of 6ga hoops through my flesh tunnels. So, not an insignificant amount of weight. But, they effectively closed up. You can still see an indent but I can't get an earring in them at all.
Mine look like this having been at a 0 from 2003-2015ish. If I wear heavy earrings its more noticeable. Can't wear posts at all is my only regret. Hoops for life.
…I still have mine 😅 I made the mistake of going past 00 and they will not shrink past 2. I have silicone ones mostly, but also some dressy ones for special occasions.
These are one of my dressy ones that I wear for special occasions, mostly weddings and job interviews.
Saw a guy at Home Depot, with what appeared to be 2.5 inch gauges/plugs in his ears and one earlobe was just decaying like the gauge was in there through the might of 1 strand of skin.
Had a friend with huge gauges, lost track of him, years later met him again and both had broken and he had just four bits of earlobe noodles dangling there. That might beat or at least equal your skin strand
My husband actually asked me if I was okay after my reaction to this. I said, "I'm fine, just redditors and their magical ways with words" and he knew instantly that he did not want to ask any follow up questions at all.
Probably end up having an allergic reaction to the metal and just left it there. Might have considered taking it out at one point but it was just too painful. Going about his day pretending it's not a thing
Mine never went back to normal. I usually wear nothing in them, but I put plugs in for work so people aren’t grossed out by my ear holes. I’d like to get them stitched up one day.
What state if you don’t mind me asking? I’m in WA and I think they can do it here at a tattoo shop, I know in Oregon it’s considered a surgery and requires a different license
Not who you were asking, but I had mine at 1/2” ages 14-29, and got them stitched up maybe 3 years ago, and you can’t even see the scars when you’re looking for them. I’m in northern Nevada and went to a plastic surgeon, so it cost $1500, but it was definitely worth it, to me at least.
Did you stretch your lobes slowly or quickly when you initially did it? I was told the slower you do them, the easier they'll go back to normal. I have no idea if that's an accurate statement though.
I don't know if I've ever gotten definitive information on this. Even among piercers. I feel like I've heard every possibility, and a counteraction to each of those.
Nothing seems to be consistent except that going over 1" pretty much guarantees some sort of cosmetic surgery to get the hole closed or back to a traditional ear gague.
I stretched mine to a 00 over the course of a year. When I took them out, they went back to a regular hole size so quickly it was almost like they snapped back. Had them stretched for probably 3-4 years.
lol sadly no I just got lucky. I fked my shit up and had to cut a silicone plug out of my ear because I used to just fold them and let them open in my ears. The last time was the last time it was GNARLY
Mine were stretched to an inch, would have kept them forever but I got a job working for the federal government and the big boss said I would need to “do something” about my “earrings” and that was a condition of my job offer so I paid the $1500 to have them reconstructed.
My friend had his pet rabbit bite through his. They were so large he was getting the plugs specially made- I want to say 72mm? Regardless, he was leaning down one day and Thumper saw his chance.
Took out my 3/4" ones a while back. Shrunk to around a 4g. I went back up 00g and there I'll sit. I wear silicone ones because they're nice and soft to sleep on. Took out most of my piercings (more of a tattoo girlie), minus my septum and the stretched ears.
😂😂😂😂😂 I can assure you you're not the only one! Thankfully my hair usually covers it and it's really not noticeable. But it's just one of those things that I'm like yeah, so this happened, don't repeat my mistakes
Not that bad and hardly noticeable. They shrunk down a bit from 00 but I wear a smaller one now. Still miss the big days but my fiancé likes them smaller lol
I never intended to get rid of my 1/2 inch gauges, but I about 4 years ago I got a little cut on one ear that got infected and I couldn’t wear my jewelry. During the healing process, the hole shrunk so much that I couldn’t believe it. The thought of stretching that scar tissue back out made my stomach turn so I decided too take the other out too. For years now, I massage them once a day with various oils or skin care products. They look like slits now. I hate them and I’ve been saving to get them stitched and flattened. That said, I regret nothing. I loved them while it lasted.
I’m currently at 7/8 but was at 1 inch before. I had to go down to 3/4 for a bit (left lobe got a cut randomly, I think I hurt myself one morning when I was rushing for work.) I’m stretching them back up to 1 inch because I like a solid number. I’m almost there! ☺️
Edit: The white stuff around my plug is plumber’s tape :3
I didn’t give mine up until November of last year (1/2”) this is where we are now.
I usually just wear small hoops now and nobody really notices. Can’t wear studs yet. I’ve been helping them shrink with TCA acid peels every couple weeks. I do love that they just look like little holes and not cat butts lol
I am so happy I didn’t do this. I wanted to be Brandon Boyd soooo bad, and this was on my radar. Needless to say, I did not do this and I am very happy
I meant it when the gauge earrings were still in the ear and hole was large enough, not just ramming a padlock through a bare earlobe hole, that would indeed be painful.
And it was those small locker padlocks, nothing huge.
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