I was walking at the beach recently when two women knee-deep in the water caught my attention. Their backs toward me, one wore a one-piece bathing suit, while the other was NAKED!
At least that’s what I thought at first. It couldn’t be, of course. After all, I was at my Connecticut town’s family-friendly beach, not a secluded nudist colony or something.
I soon realized the “naked” woman, who looked to be in her early 40s and boasted a curvy, toned body, was wearing a minuscule bikini. The bottom was a thong, and the strings holding together the bikini’s three front-facing triangles were as thin as yarn. I think she was going for the Kim Kardashian look.
Was I scandalized? Offended? Jealous of her body? I wasn’t sure how I felt, but I was definitely a tad rattled. I couldn’t stop staring, wondering whether her swimwear was inappropriate or if I was just out of touch.
A week later, I had the exact same reaction when a young woman with a heavily pierced face took my order at an ice cream shop. I was visiting my 29-year-old son Andres in his Brooklyn neighborhood, where the median age is probably 15 years below the national one.
The woman, who couldn’t have been older than 30, had at least 20 piercings radiating from her lips down to her chin and sideways to her lower cheeks. About five piercings were in the shape of spikes, three of which protruded from her lips, but most were small silver ball studs, haphazardly scattered like freckles.
For a second, I thought she might have a medical condition, as one of her irises was light pink. But then I realized her eye color— or colors, I should say— was part of the look. The other iris was the lightest blue-green.
I wanted to take in her face without seeming insensitive or rude or simple. But then it occurred to me that perhaps calling attention to herself was one of the points of her myriad facial accessories, and not giving such attention would be disappointing. In the end, I tried to act as if there was nothing unusual about her look.
Once she was out of earshot, I posed my dilemma to Andres.
“Andres, I don’t know what to make of the cashier with all those piercings. I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you?”
“Eh, maybe eight people,” he said, matter-of-fact.
Hmm, I thought. Maybe it’s the novelty that has me all discombobulated.
Partly, yes. I know this because the next day I went online to do a bit of research on piercing procedures. I was relieved to find that the cheek doesn’t need to be pierced through and through. You can get what’s called a dermal anchor, where the anchor sits just under the skin. After looking at so many pierced lips and cheeks, they no longer seemed so, well, extreme.
My 31-year-old son Diego, who’d come along to visit his brother, didn’t bat an eye. Now, Diego’s autistic and has no social filter. He doesn’t know the meaning of lying or etiquette and would have said something had he found the piercings peculiar, the same way he compliments a tattoo or remarks on a person’s accent. The fact that he didn’t comment on the piercings meant he’d thought nothing of them.
But what bothered me the most about the two incidents was the question of whether I disapproved, like older people do when the youth move on to new styles, new rhythms, new ways of relating. I don’t want to frown on things just because they’re new to me or unusual for my generation. I don’t what to be the 56-year-old woman lamenting “Youth these days!” without giving the situation a fair shake.
And so, after a bit of reflection, I’m ready to move from confusion to personal opinion (which might change, by the way):
Micro bikini at a family beach→ You have a hot body and look amazing in that black bikini, but it is inappropriate for the venue. Cover up a bit, please!
Multiply pierced face with dual eye color → I don’t get it, but don’t let me stop you! You shouldn’t give a second thought to what this old(er) woman thinks.
A version of this post was first published in Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age