Ear Piercing Debate

Hi my lil' fairies,

It seems like all I ever seem to do is complain about what I've seen on my usual weekday morning television schedule, which normally includes Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women! I can normally watch pretty much any segment and understand both perspectives, but, today, I watched a segment about a debate that has been talked about before and is just increasingly angering me each time.

Would you let your toddler get their ears pierced?

Here's the video from the last time it was debated:

I know it's a question that raises controversy but my main issue was the argument from the woman who opposed it: getting your toddler's ears pierced is child abuse.

EXCUSE ME?!?

Here's my stance on this issue as a whole: I got my ears pierced when I was a small baba because it's pretty much normal in my culture and the same thing happened to my sister when she was little. I never found anything weird about it and, fast forward 20 years, I now have 3 piercings on each ear and my sister's got two (there are currently plans for more in the Summer). This means that I'm fine with getting young kid's ears pierced, but I get that some people might think differently.

Now, here's my issue with the woman's argument who is against this. I find it fair that she doesn't think it's right, I mean it's up to a parent whether they think it's appropriate or not. However, it was the way this woman was describing parents who get it done to there kids. Maybe I'm bias because it's all I know, but calling it child abuse and saying that it's ostracising young children - I mean come on! For one, this is trivialising the actual concept of child abuse that is going on in the world: children getting beaten, starved and sexually exploited - this is abuse, not getting your child's ears pierced! The women then went on to say that it's emphasising vanity and ruining a child's innocence by exploiting them. How? How is getting a child's ears pierced doing this? Parents don't go around flaunting their children's ears and getting unwanted attention, it just doesn't happen! She then decided to criticise the woman opposing her, who I can assume is also of the Indian culture like me and didn't see an issue with getting a child's ears pierced. It's one thing saying that parent's shouldn't do it, but criticising a culture that normalises this is another thing that just add's to this woman making a mountain out of a molehill (Phineas and Ferb reference anyone?). Throughout this interview, she just kept weakening her own argument and, by the end of it, I just wanted to throw the TV out of the window!

If she'd straight up said she didn't like it because it didn't give the child a choice, then it'd be fine - it was the hyperbolic and OTT way she did it - there are worse things in the world that could happen to a child.

I've had my ears pierced since I was a baby and it has no way mentally or psychologically impacted me. I get that she has an opinion but slamming and labelling parents as 'irresponsible' is just rude and stupid - you can't assume a parents state to raise children by small decisions like this... 

So, maybe I'm the controversial one but the way she argued it, I just feel like she's made herself look stupid because comparing getting your kid's ears pierced to child abuse it the stupidest thing I have ever heard. I do want to know what other people think, so let me know if you want!

That's all for now my dears

xx