Aesthetics - Fashion and Beauty

Particularly with the rise of piercing in the fashion world there has to be a distinction made between piercing for reasons of beautification as opposed to piercing to follow a fashion.

The distinction between fashion and personal beautification is an important, but not necessarily an obvious one. The fashion industry determines, for many, what looks good and what is appropriate to be seen wearing. People who follow fashions would argue that if piercing is fashionable it looks good, as such it could be said to be aesthetically pleasing, or beautiful. I would, however, argue that such followers of fashion find the fashion pleasing rather than the actual piercing itself. When piercing becomes unfashionable it may be actively disliked by followers of fashion. The difference I wish to emphasise is that between people who actively follow fashions as opposed to those people who find the effect piercing has on ones visual appearance enhancing. In the former case the value of the piercing is based on its current place in the world of fashion, whilst in the latter case the piercing is regarded as emphasising or increasing the beauty of the wearer, regardless of current popular opinion.

'Each time I get a piercing my boyfriend accuses me of gilding the lily, but I think my jewellery magically transforms a piece of flesh into a work of art,' (Myers 1992 p 293).

Piercing for fashion reasons is well established, indeed professional piercers acknowledge the fact that the vast majority of all piercings they do are for fashion reasons. There are a number of books which discuss piercing as a fashion, particularly by Ted Polhemus. Within this discussion I am intending to ignore the vast majority of people who have had a piercing. Instead I will be looking at the few for whom piercing has become an important part of their lives. In the rest of this paper unless specifically noted all references to 'piercees' will exclude those people who pierce for fashion reasons.