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Lean

May 30, 2014 by WendyB

I’m not sipping lean like rapper Lil Wayne or the late Pimp C. I’m not leaning in like Sheryl Sandberg. According to two recent photos, I’m living life on an angle, like the drag queens in La Cage Aux Folles.

I’m the one in the leopard dress leaning back in this photo from the Patrick Kelly exhibition opening at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last month.

patkellylean

Strange!

And early this month, I leaned back to smile at my designing friend Stacy Lomman right before getting a second piercing in my right earlobe.

earringlean

Hi!

I got the piercing at Addiction NYC on St. Marks Place. As you can see from the photo on Addiction NYC’s website, bongs are in the front of the store; tattoos and piercings are in the back.

I probably got my ears pierced for the first time when I was around 13. I know it was in a mall. At the time, people were very into using a piercing gun instead of a needle. It was supposed to be less painful than the needle; it is definitely less accurate. Both my sister and I wound up with piercings that are way too low on our lobes. When I got my left earlobe pierced a second time a couple of years later, that hole also came out too low. I didn’t do the right earlobe at the time because I was into an asymmetric look, not because of the piercing position problems.

More recently, with all the emoji stud earrings I’ve created for my line, I started wanting another hole. I put it off a long time because I was scared the piercing would wind up poorly placed once again, but the gal at Addiction did a great job. I also liked that she used a stud made from surgical steel. It’s not beautiful, but it has very little nickel in it. Gold — even 18K gold — can contain nickel, which is very irritating and can trigger an allergy or sensitize the wearer to gold. In my business, I definitely don’t want to have a problem with gold!

UPDATED TO ADD: Shout out to the dude on Twitter who pointed out that this post needed to include Terror Squad‘s song “Lean Back.”

I love the remix with Fat Joe (who was on the original), Lil John, Eminem and Mase. Clearly, I was in the midst of the “Lean Back” dance when I was photographed at the Patrick Kelly show!

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Filed Under: earrings, Eminem, music, pictures of me

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jan Graham-McMillen says

    May 30, 2014 at 1:46 pm

    That’s the ticket, Wendy … keep ‘um off balance!
    Pretty can be off-center! What a good reminder.

    • WendyB says

      June 2, 2014 at 11:37 pm

      Apparently, I’m more flexible than I knew!

  2. Sheila (of Ephemera) says

    May 31, 2014 at 8:51 pm

    You know I love seeing you in that leopard dress – ROWR!

    I recently got my 3 holes in both ears, plus one in the cartilage at the top of my right ear, and it was the first time I’d ever gotten them properly done by a piercer vs. some teenager at the mall (my first two were done in the 80s, with the gun, by some dude in the iron-on t-shirt shop). It was so much better! I’m thinking about which imoji I need for one of my 3rd holes once they are fully healed…hmmm…will it be the “rock on”?

    • WendyB says

      June 2, 2014 at 11:36 pm

      OMG! I want to go up to three too! The real piercer made all the difference.

  3. stacy says

    June 2, 2014 at 8:52 pm

    You were such a trooper! Smiling, walking past the bongs without a care in the world, entering a tiny room in the back with a massage bed and saying, “Go ahead, please stick a needle through my ear!” You’re badass.

    • WendyB says

      June 2, 2014 at 11:36 pm

      I’m much more scared of going to the dentist than getting my ear pierced!

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MEET WENDY BRANDES

Award-winning designer of fine jewelry inspired by women's history and pop culture. A former journalist who writes about jewelry, fashion, medieval history, news, feminism, dogs, cats and whatever else is on her mind. Blogging since 2007.
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