Teens Find Piercing Reality in Body Modifications

You hear the sound of foreign machines buzzing all around you. You're nervous, scared, nearly overdosing on adrenaline and fear. You lie down on the table and look at all the unfamiliar equipment as you brace yourself, and then... OUCH!

No, you haven't been abducted by aliens or had some freak operation done, you've just gotten a new piercing. The same goes for getting a new tattoo, except the "ouch" tends to last a bit longer.

Piercing and tattoos among minors are becoming more popular every day, as is society's acceptance to them. With pop star examples like Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears sporting piercings and tattoos, seeing someone with a nose ring isn't at all abnormal anymore.

"Tons of kids are getting pierced at as young as 12 or 13-years-old," said Justin Parker, piercer at Platinum Ink in Austin, TX. "The youngest I've ever had come in here was an 11-year-old girl wanting to get her navel pierced."

Other popular areas for piercing amongst young people are the tongue, nose, labret, eyebrow and ear cartilage.

Despite the growing trend, there are some safety issues when it comes to minors because of the growth they still have left to do. Piercings tend to migrate or sometimes reject with growth, and tattoos tend to stretch and become distorted.

Migration is when a piercing moves to a different location from the original placement. In other cases, skin that is pierced sometimes becomes thicker or thinner usually due to weight gain or loss.

Rejection occurs when one's body pushes the piercing out like a splinter, usually starting from the edges of a piercing moving toward the middle until the jewelry is completely forced out of the skin, resulting in a bad scar.

Certain piercings have higher rejection rates, such as surface piercings. Sometimes it's caused by bad placement, unsuitable jewelry or sometimes people's bodies just aren't fit for the piercing.