Piercing the Ears
“For a while, the barbaric custom of piercing the ears was obsolete. Alas it has again come into fashion. The long pendant eardrops make many girls look positively brazen, to others they give an oriental look and the beholder thinks he is gazing on a maiden from the East. We look with dismay on the woman who has her nose pierced and a ring suspended therefrom. Is not piercing the ears only a lesser form of the same evil?”
– Young Woman’s Journal, June 1912
Regrettably, meanies have stolen content from Keepa in the past! I'm confident you will choose honesty and cite this page like this:
MLA: Parshall, Ardis E. ""Piercing the Ears": The View from 1912." Keepapitchin.org, 27 Nov 2015, https://keepapitchinin.org/2015/11/27/piercing-the-ears-the-view-from-1912/.
APA: Parshall, A. (2015, Nov 27). "Piercing the Ears": The View from 1912. Keepapitchinin.org. https://keepapitchinin.org/2015/11/27/piercing-the-ears-the-view-from-1912/
HTML: <a target="_new" href="https://keepapitchinin.org/2015/11/27/piercing-the-ears-the-view-from-1912/">"Piercing the Ears": The View from 1912</a>
Comments are closed.
And now the church offers pictures of 69 different pairs of earrings suitable for our missionaries:
https://missionary.lds.org/clothing/sister/dress/shoes?lang=eng
(scroll past the shoes)
I find these posts about changing standards totally fascinating. (I hope there’s more in that Standards series forthcoming.)
How it is that the specifically “long, pendant” shape is so reprehensible to the commentator? Would studs be less brazen? Would my grandmother’s clip-on earrings be more acceptable since they don’t involve actually piercing flesh?
I have so many questions!
P. S. Can I be entered in the book giveaway? 🙂
Stud earrings call less attention to themselves, but require the earlobe to be actually pierced. Slightly larger earrings can be simply clipped to the ear and removed later. And when I clip on my shiny red glass balls, well, then you know that it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
I’m getting out my troll doll Santas. Wonder what the YWJ would think of them?