Balancing act

July 23, 2019 3:55 PM

I am planning some new piercings and wonder how to best balance them against what I have.

I don’t need to be symmetrical I think, but aesthetically pleasing would be good.
At present I have plain lobe piercings, 3 with normal spacing up my left lobe and 4 up my right.

I would like to make the following changes and additions.
- stretch one of the lobe piercings very slightly for a small tunnel
- get an inner conch piercing
- possibly add an upper-lobe piercing over one of the extant holes

What would look best? I am right handed, have some loose tattoos on each arm and am considering a larger more coordinated piece on my upper right arm. I don’t expect to add much more piercings in the future. I also have a hole but no piercing on my right eyebrow that I don’t really see myself populating again at my age, but perhaps with a teeny tiny ring.

posted by Iteki to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (3 answers total)

How do you like to wear your hair? Because I find this really changes how all sorts of facial adornments present, including things like glasses and makeup but also of course piercings. If you have heavy bangs and a center part for example you're reinforcing your symmetry and I think an even number of additional details on either side would be good, like a tunnel on your right and the conch on the left (or whatever). If you part most of your hair to the left then having more interest on the side with less hair volume (the right) is a good guideline. Generally it's nice to balance volume of larger things with detail of smaller things on the opposite side, so like, hair can be big (or little if you keep it buzzed!) but so can chunky glasses or a preference for bold lipsticks or a big shoulder tattoo, and small details can be piercings or mascara or hair clips. Thinking of your face as a composition in this way can help you decide.
posted by Mizu at 5:59 PM on July 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Mizu, excellent question, I should have mentioned I am a cis woman with a butch of center presentation and have too short hair at the moment for a parting, but when I do it’s on the right with longer on top, tapered sides), no glasses yet.
posted by Iteki at 2:35 AM on July 24, 2019

I'm kind of partial to having a fancy side and a plainer side, if you decide to do this all on one ear. As far as the stretching goes, I have my second lobe piercing stretched and it looks nice. My lobes are only at 8g so I can still wear "normal" earrings if I want to.
posted by fiercecupcake at 7:32 AM on July 24, 2019 [1 favorite]