GSI Media
-
Parenting
Celebrity Mamas
-
Entertainment
Photos
-
Parenting
Celebrity Mamas
For personal reasons I’ll get into in a sec, I was actually interested in the “news” story that Angelina Jolie took two of her daughters to get their ears pierced. The part that piqued my interest was the bit about how 5-year-old Shiloh (the one who dresses like a boy) bailed after watching older sis Zahara, 6, go under the gun.
“She was saying it felt like a stapler,” a source told London’s The Sun newspaper. “So her little sister changed her mind...but they all left with big smiles on their faces.” (Apparently daddy Brad Pitt was none too happy about the new holes in Zahara’s head.)
The reason I care is because my daughters, ages 6 and 8, are absolutely obsessed with pierced ears. So much so that I’ve resisted letting them do it, not because I’m against bejeweled lobes in theory, but because once I do I won’t have that to lord over them anymore. (What? That’s powerful ammo for the old parenting arsenal.) But we’re taking them to New York next week, and one of the many, many surprises in store for them involves stabbing pain to the auricles.
I have lots of friends who pierce their infants’ ears immediately after birth, right there in the hospital. And I have other friends who pick a seemingly arbitrary age -- like 13 or 30 -- and stick to it (probably for the aforementioned reasons involving bribery and weaponry, but possibly also because they think earrings look tarty on the pre-teen crowd.) And who am I to judge? However, I want my daughters to know what they’re getting into -- not just the pain part, but the upkeep, the cleaning and the reality that if they ask me one time for dangly, hoochie-mama earrings I will let those holes close up faster than you can say “dangly hoochie-mama earrings.” I’ve told them: It’s loud. It hurts. And if you don’t care for the holes properly, the resulting auditory infection is going to make that time they collided out on their skateboards seem like a hangnail. So I think we’re all set on the prep. I just need to decide which one should go first.
