“Why do you do that to your face/body?”

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me this, both friend and stranger alike, I’d have a lot of money.

The first few times I actually had to stop and think about the question, because when I get a piercing, there isn’t any other reason than the simplest of them all…because I wanted to. Once the piercing is whenever it went, it really isn’t a big deal to me. Its not something abnormal and new, something I want people to see.

When I get pierced, whether its in my ear, my nose, soon to be my lip and other areas, I do so because when I look in the mirror, I see the piercing already there-when I see myself in my mind, the metal is already in place.

Think of it this way, most artists…musicians, painters, photographers, sketch, graphic…etc…visualize what they are going to put to paper, canvas, audio track in their minds before they actually materialize the vision. Yes…sometimes the inspiration is external…whatever makes a photog pick up his camera and want to capture any given moment, or the painter to want to put to canvas a particular scene or whatever…but creation usually starts in the mind with a vision, a thought…so what you see materialized on a canvas, paper, etc…has probably existed in the mind of the artist for a long time.

For me, its the same. I see it in my mind…so when I actually get these mods done, its as normal to me as getting my hair trimmed.

So when people ask me these questions, some even saying things like “why would you ruin your beautiful face with that stuff?” “what about when you get old?”

I simply say – I get these things because I want to, and because this is how I see myself. I think my face is as beautiful with, if not more, than it is as without. Your ideal of beauty is not mine, and it doesn’t have to be…which is the beauty of it.

And when I’m old?

Who cares? I’ll be old and wrinkly…and I will be smiling, because I did what I wanted when I wanted, without being restricted by the ideals and constraints that others are constantly trying to put around me, most of the time without realizing it.

I’ll be one bad ass wrinkly old lady with metal in my face…yup.

Next up? Lip ring. And the privates.

Maybe one of these days I’ll get the tattoos I’ve been envisioning for a while.