Piercings as A Timeless Historical Style
By Isabel Piazza
This article was inspired by Ohanga Creative Jennifer LaRosa Hick’s upcycled jewelry.
You can browse Hick’s creations in the Ohanga Market.
Stacked ear piercings are all the rage nowadays. Content creators love to show off their placements and coordinate earrings in aesthetically pleasing patterns. One TikTok creator (@piercingsby_marie) specializes in placements modeled after zodiac constellations. As this trend increases in popularity with millennials and Gen Z, criticism of it increases proportionally with boomers.
Criticisms of a curated ear stem from the belief that they are unprofessional. Parents love to tell their children to avoid any look that differs from the norms to protect their image and employability. These norms are heavily gendered; for decades, it was a societal given that girls get one set of lobe piercings and boys get none. However, millennials and Gen Z consider gender to be a fluid spectrum and value bodily autonomy and aesthetics far more than rigid social rules.
For a long time, the traditional, popular pair of earrings resembled the I Love Lucy housewife-pearl-earrings. Gen Z and TikTok trends have expanded what can be conceptualized as jewelry and art. Young artists have transformed everyday objects such as matchboxes and Troll dolls into adornments. Odd items being utilized as aesthetic earrings have fascinating historical footprints: Frida Kahlo’s 1940 Self Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser, for instance, has her sporting upside-down earrings in the shape of a hand. With piercings’ recent artistic expansion, it is easy to forget that they are trending after a long period of dormancy.
Although they have not been especially conventional in the last century, piercings actually have a lengthy history. The housewife-pearl-earrings have old roots, such as Johannes Vermeer’s 1665 Girl with a Pearl Earring. But the stacked look has at least a century on it. Maria of Portugal was a Portuguese Infanta and the Hereditary Princess of Parma by marriage. She was born in 1538 and died in 1577. Not much is known about her, except that she had five lobe piercings and rocked them with five gold hoops. In 1550, Antonis Mor, a Netherlandish portrait painter, depicted twelve-year-old Maria in all her regalia and her stacked earring look. As unexpected as it may seem, multiple piercings were all the rage among royalty members, almost five hundred years before our time.
This trend has remained dormant for so long that people were distraught at Josie Rourke’s depiction of Mary Stuart in her 2018 historical drama Mary Queen of Scots. Saoirse Ronan plays the title role and proudly wears five silver hoops on each ear. A common criticism of the film was that Ronan’s costuming was jarringly anachronistic. The Scottish queen lived from 1542 to 1587, the same historical moment as Maria of Portugal—so it is entirely possible that Mary Stuart was ruling with beautiful Gen-Z-approved stacked piercings.
Today’s stacked piercings trend carries extensive historical meaning and gives a nod to sixteenth-century royal style. Artistic exploration of what can be an earring should be welcomed and nurtured. For a glimpse into Ohanga’s range of curious and creative earrings, check out Jennifer LaRosa Hick’s upcycled jewelry.
Works Cited
Babbs, Verity. “The 10 Best Earrings in Art History - TheArtGorgeous.” The Art Gorgeous, 12 July 2021, https://theartgorgeous.com/the-10-best-earrings-in-art-history/. Accessed 1 March 2022.
Baxter, Hannah. “Why Multiple Piercings Are More Than Just a Trend.” Coveteur, 10 December 2018, https://coveteur.com/2018/12/10/multiple-piercings-more-than-popular-trend/. Accessed 1 March 2022.
Images:
“Girl with a Pearl Earring.” Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meisje_met_de_parel.jpg
“Self Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser.” Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain. https://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_299336/Frida-Kahlo/Self-Portrait-Dedicated-To-Dr-Eloesser-1940