Getting Your Ears Stretched at a Piercing Shop

[Tom]

I wanted to bring this subject up because I have been hearing some talk on it, and I also can relate to it.
When I got my ears stretched for the first time, I went to a piercing shop. This took place in 2005 when I knew absolutely nothing about ear stretching. I went to a shop because I thought they would give good advice and let me know how I should go about stretching my ears. I was at a 14g going into the shop. I told them I wanted them to stretch my ears and asked "what size can I stretch to? He replied "oh you can go to a 6g, even a 4g no problem! I have done it many times." So I went along with his advice and had my ears stretched to a 6g. Now that I have some sort of knowledge on the subject, it pisses me off that shops will give you shitty advice like this. I'm sure is happening to a lot of people around the world, getting bad advice and spreading it on the web.

[corazon_de_oro]

Great post. A lot of people are way quicker to take the advice of a piercing shop than some random person on the internet, which is unfortunate because piercers RARELY give *great* stretching advice. There's a pretty big percentage of piercers that still give awful aftercare advice too. It's unfortunate that that happens; a person who's getting pierced should be able to trust what the person that's doing it to them says. That's why it's so important to find a good piercer and stick with them... I was SO lucky to find mine, who's a member of the APP. There are just too many piercers out there who got into it because it's trendy, or they're tattooists who need a little extra money and don't bother educating themselves.
I think everyone should read this http://www.safepiercing.org/piercing/ch ... a-piercer/ before they start getting piercings. It doesn't have a whole lot to do with stretching but I was a little off-topic anyway, haha. I'm tired.