Piercing Prohibitions and Taboos
While body piercing has grown more widespread, it can remain controversial, particularly in youth. In 2004, controversy erupted in Crothersville, Indiana when a local high school featured a spread on "Body Decorations" in its yearbook that featured tattoos and body piercings of teachers and students. That same year, in Henry County, Georgia, a 15-year-old boy remained in in-school suspension for a full month for violating school policy by wearing eyebrow, nose, labret and tongue piercings to school before his mother decided to homeschool him. According to 2006's Tattoos and Body Piercing, corporate dress codes can also strictly limit piercing displays. At that time, Starbucks limited piercings to two per ear and jewellery to small, matched earrings. Employees of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts were not permitted to display piercings at all.
Body piercing in some religions is held to be destructive to the body. Some passages of the Bible, including Leviticus 19:28, have been interpreted as prohibiting body modification because the body is held to be the property of God. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taken an official position against most piercings unless for medical reasons, although they accept piercings for women as long as there is only one set of piercings in the lower lobe of the ears and no other place on the body. Wearing of very large nose rings on Shabbat is forbidden by the Talmud.
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Famous quotes containing the words piercing and/or taboos:
“O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!”
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
“Both magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant revelation of their wonder-working power. They both are surrounded by taboos and observances which mark off their acts from those of the profane world.”
—Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942)