“I have to admit that I feel so punk with this piercing, I just feel so cool.”
I guess I wanna say something about my tattoos and piercings as well, because I feel my body is my space, right? And I was thinking about it on the bus, like ‘What am I gonna tell Lenh about this, I don’t know’, but then I thought about my piercings and my tattoos, and it is the way I move through the world.
I had so many problems as a teenager, and when I was younger, growing up, I was bullied because of my weight, and because of my hair, all these things. When you’re bullied, or when everyone feels like they have something to say about you, you don’t feel like your body is your own, you know? And obviously I didn’t think that when I was ten years old, but this feeling that your body is not your own really resonates with me when I think about all these memories, and I remember the moment that I got my first ever body modification that was consensual – because my first earrings, my mom made them when I was a baby, I love them but some people don’t like them, so you should definitely wait until your kids tell you they want earrings.
“This is my way of saying ‘my body is mine’.”
Anyways, my first body modification was my septum piercing, and I felt amazing, it’s a feeling that… I cannot describe it, I just felt so empowered. I think this is my way of saying ‘my body is mine’. And I love it, I decorate it how I want, I celebrate it and I just add things that make me feel more at home in my body. It started with piercings, I started to get tattoos. I wanna get one in a couple of weeks as well, a snake on my hip, it’s gonna be pretty big, I’m so excited!
And despite the disapproval of my family, especially my extended family – they are really annoying about my piercings – but growing up as this person that always wanted everyone’s approval, to do the things that feel right for me despite all of that has been really liberating, also defending my personal space and the right for myself to do what I want with my body.
I tell my grandmother ‘Hey, I don’t like that you’re saying this’ or ‘It’s my ears, I get to pierce them if I want to’, you know? I’m not always this direct, I also try to put it in perspective, so when my grandmother is like ‘Why do you pierce your ears?’, I’m like ‘Well you also have pierced ears, what’s the difference?’, and she said ‘Yeah, these are good, and yours…’ but I know she’ll think about it later. Because in confrontations at the moment, no-one is gonna admit that maybe they have changed their mind. But she’ll think about it, and most people here are alright with that, and thankfully I’ve never had to work, and when I do have to work, I think it should be fine.
It’s not only your family determining what you can do with your body, but it’s also capitalism and the economy and this need of having to cater to the people that are gonna hire you. So out of fear of what my potential boss thinks, I have to not do what I want with my body, which is to get an incredible amount of tattoos and piercings.
I don’t want that, and I guess it just goes back to that thing that I was saying about living in fear, I don’t want that. If it happens, then so be it, but I’m not gonna restrict myself out of fear of what my potential employer might think. I know that this is actually a privilege, many people have to think about this because they have to work. But I guess it’s pointless if I don’t do it because other people have to restrict themselves, because no-one wins.
L: I’m just thinking about everything you said, especially about anticipating fear, because so many things tell us to be fearful. And about your approach of not giving into that...
I’m an anarchist, so there are many things about how the world works that I don’t like, and I guess it’s my own little way of rebellion, not to give into that, to try not to give into that. Sometimes we don’t have that option, but I think I wanna live in freedom as much as I can. And I guess also just being yourself and setting boundaries and telling people what you don’t like… the tongue piercing really reminded me of that.
This piercing was especially different because my mom really, really didn’t want me to get it. I said it months ago, like just joking, ‘Hey mom, what would you say if I got a tongue piercing?’ ‘No, you’re not gonna get that, please don’t get a tongue piercing, you’re not gonna’ and I was like ‘Ok’. I guess deep down she knows that I’m gonna do whatever I want.
“I was so empowered. It’s this feeling of being at home with your body.”
I got it, and I didn’t think much about it, I just was like ‘I’m gonna tell my mom later’ and I felt so cool after I got it, I just felt this rush of adrenaline that I can only compare to the first time I got a piercing, I’m actually coming full circle here with this one. And I told my friend Tay, who also helps with the kitchen collective, they were there when I was getting my tongue pierced, I was like ‘Tay, I will tell the world!’
I literally just had this adrenaline rush after I got it and I was walking out of the shop and I was like ‘Yeees’, I felt so punk and so cool and so bad-ass, I loved it. And I was so empowered. It’s this feeling of being at home with your body, and the more things I do, the more I love it. I’m already in love with the way I look and who I am, but it just makes it more and it makes it so original, so me, and I love that.
So, I felt like that, and then on this group chat from this organization where I’m helping out every once in a while, for context, one person had their tooth removed, and he was saying that he was not going to be able to make it to some meeting because of that, and and I was like ‘I’m also not there, funnily enough I also have a mouth thing that I’m trying to rest from, I got my tongue pierced’. And then this… man just answered like ‘Why would you hurt your mouth if it’s not necessary, I’ve heard that if you get your tongue pierced, you have more chances of infection’, and then he gave me advice on some disinfecting thing.
I don’t mind this advice, even though didn’t really ask for it, what bothered me was the first part, it actually just took me back to all these times that I was so afraid of what my mom was gonna think. It’s incredible, like one person says something and just… so, that night, I was awake, also because of the pain in my tongue, it was the most painful night, so I was just thinking ‘Wow, should I take it out?’
I really thought I was gonna take it out, and now I’m like ‘Why? Why would I?’ But I was like ‘Maybe this is not for me, who am I fooling?’, just because of things that someone said…
“Now that I’m thinking about it, how many things have I said that made people feel like that?”
Now that I’m thinking about it, how many things have I said that made people feel like that? And this is also a form of crossing someone’s boundaries, commenting on something that they did with their bodies that has nothing to do with you. I didn’t ask what he thought about me getting a tongue piercing. I really thought about this, how even such comments can be an invasion of someone’s personal space…
Now I’m doing fine, but you know, at night everything seems scarier, so at 1.30 I was like ‘O my god, should I take it out, what did I do, who did I think I was to get my tongue pierced?’ [laughs]
