Piercing Organic Jewelry

The writer of the following article has never heard a lecture about piercing organic jewelry. She has, however, attended a lecture given by Margaret Meade. Anyone who has listened to that famous anthropologist feels obligated to encourage a closer examination of other cultures and other people. Almost thirty years after hearing the talk by Margaret Meade, the writer of the following article took a health-related course. In the course textbook the writer found pictures of organic piercing jewelry. Those pictures stirred-up memories of the talk by Margaret Meade. They motivated the writer to sit at her computer, and to produce the following essay.

In order to answer the question posed in the title of this article one needs to know the nature of piercing organic jewelry. Such jewelry has been fashioned from a diverse number of different materials. Some jewelers use amber, some bamboo, some bone or stone. Other jewelers make their decorative pieces from a very hard wood or from the horn of an animal. Each piece, regardless of its composition, can pierce some part of the human body.

So, can the wearing of piercing organic jewelry make a person look more attractive to a potential sex partner? The preceding paragraph has provided some help with the search for an answer to that question. Still, one can not fairly judge the capabilities of piercing organic jewelry without first examining the nature of attractiveness.

As teenagers reach the age of puberty, they put more effort into looking attractive. They understand the meaning of the word “attractive.” When a person appears more attractive, then he or she can better arouse the sexual desires of those who might be searching for a potential sex partner. In other words, the attractiveness of any piece of jewelry must be judged by its ability to elicit sexual arousal.

Having better-defined the meaning of attractiveness, this article returns to the initial question: Can piercing organic jewelry make one appear more attractive? The short answer is this: In some societies it can.

In today’s diverse world, there are many different standards by which people judge the attractiveness of others. Anthropologists have made a study of those various standards. They have even taken pictures of those judged “most attractive” within a wide range of different societies.

Those anthropologists have found that among certain tribal groups, a person with a thin wooden stick in his or her nose is seen as “attractive.” Such a person arouses the sexual interests of another tribal member, a member who is searching for a sex partner. Within that one tribe, the wearing of piercing jewelry raises the level of one’s attractiveness.

Anthropologists have also taken pictures of Asian women with jewelry hanging from their noses. Those women were considered “more attractive” by the surrounding Asian men. A number of the men who saw such women wanted to have sex with the same women.

Would some groups of people experience sexual arousal, upon viewing a person with fake organic jewelry? The answer to that question remains a mystery. Perhaps the reader of this article has been motivated to search for the answer to that question. Perhaps the reader of this article would like to study how different groups of people respond to such fake jewelry.