I hate writing bad stuff about photos I receive because I feel like I’m betraying the person who submitted them (thus when I do it, it’s anonymous), but the problem you see in this photo is one that I see far too often and makes me rather sad. It’s a lobe being punched out using an 8mm dermal punch in order to install large initial jewelry (ie. 50mm² of lobe gone).

The problem with this in my opinion is that by removing such a large quantity of soft tissue, stretching will be made more difficult because there’s less tissue to work with — so while it will get them to 7/16″ quite quickly, it will make it harder for them to make it to 2″. In addition, if the person changes their mind and takes out the jewelry (even without subsequent stretching), the hole is far less likely to close. It’s just a bad idea all around in my opinion and I wish I didn’t see it so regularly.

Dermal punches of all sizes are a wonderful tool for cartilage (arguably the best tool), but I really strongly encourage people not to use punches larger than a 4mm on a lobe or other soft tissue (and personally I wouldn’t use one that’s that large).