There are no body piercing age limits, but common sense should prevail !
While there are no specific age limits in the UK for body piercing, your more ethical body piercing studio will have age limits in place. The reason for the most part is concerns on how your body continue to grow.
What is the official age limit in the UK? There isn’t one, it’s that easy. Environmental health will advise you on age limits, recommending body piercing from 12 on wards with parental consent till 16.
Ears on babies come with parental consent as standard and most piercing studios will pierce baby’s ears from approx. 6 months old.
When piercing a babies ears, the body piercer will usually make the piercing slightly higher of the natural center of the ear lobe, so that as they grow, then the piercing will naturally drop into position. For everyone else they get in most studios a standard positioned piercing.
BODY PIERCING AND A CODE OF ETHICS
Most studios that do body piercing have a code of ethics, so they self-regulate themselves. This keep them from getting screaming parent’s coming in the studio and also so that they are proving due diligence to their trade and are morally aware of the after effects of piercing as well as the initial placement of the piercing.
Any reputable body piercing studio will have an over 16 policy unless with a parent. Intimate piercings are 18 and over. Not just because of the intimate nature of the piercings, do we stipulate 18 and above, but also because the body is still maturing and these particular piercings can have effect further down the line.
A Word Of WArning
A lot of studios around the UK are piercing nipples of girls at the age of 16. Under the usual body piercing age limit.
I assume as always that the young girl nipple piercing fad, has originated from somewhere, possibly the likes of Kylie Jenner (18) but you 16 yr olds all need to stop getting your nipple pierced.I know already a hoard of ‘cool’ girls is dispelling me as knowing nothing about piercing etc., ‘what does he know’.
Here’s my background in body piercing. Me and my wife started Hedonism body piercing in stoke-on-trent in the UK and ran it for 8 yrs and brought the art of body piercing to the Stoke-on-Trent area in the UK. We have been Stoke-on-Trent and Cheshire’s environmental health port of call for body piercing guidance.
We helped put together the Barbers index guidance for body piercing, which is a government paper. We have personally trained some of the best body piercers within the industry today. We have personally designed a lot of the styles of body jewellery that you all wear today. My wife getting pregnant is why you all have pregnancy bars, as an example. We have personally done some of the most extreme and difficult piercings ever performed. Screwing the ball on a bar freshly pierced in the uvula at the back of the throat, is one of the highlights.
We have trained multiple amounts of body piercers that you hold in high respect in the Stoke-on-Trent area and further. There’s even more but I digress, what I’m trying to get across to you is we know our stuff.
So now I say again, stop getting your nipples pierced at 16. There is a body piercing age limit for a reason.
Firstly the basic side. I’m sure there not many fathers queuing up to let a complete stranger maul their young daughter’s breast. I’m sure there not many parents letting their ‘kids’ walk around topless on holiday at the tender age of 16. If you are a parent and feel that it’s okay to let some stranger piercer your 16yr old daughter’s breasts, then just ask a complete stranger. As happened in the shop today, a parent was getting advice on a piercing done wrong by some stranger who came round to her house. We gave her the advice she needed, (advice is free), then she told us that her daughter was 16. The woman next to her, a stranger, blurted out that that was disgusting and wrong in every way.
As a parent myself I understand the pressure kids can give till they get what they want, but hold fast if you don’ think the above is a stupid idea, let’s have a look at the potential medical complications that this can imply and how it has the possibility of affecting your daughter’s life for a long time. When we do a nipple piercing we slightly place the piercing in a position so the bar rest on top of the middle of the nipple, so as to not compress the discharge of milk etc. for the future, also so the jewellery doesn’t pull the nipple down and distort it.
Even if the piercing tunnels after being in for a very long time, breast feeding shouldn’t be an issue. Now your daughter is still growing, she may feel that she is an adult and some are fully fledged, but it can take up to the age of 17-18 for her intimate parts to fully mature.
Hindering Your Future For A Fashion Trend.
Deforming your developing nipples will possibly hinder breast feeding your children in the future……… Read on
Now most moral studios will not do this piercing, so it will be a more money over morals body piercer who will pierce 16 yr. olds nipples. Most of these money studios will just push a needle straight through the middle of the nipple. Right through the tube that feeds milk to the future generation. So as the 16 yr. old is still maturing, she now has a very high risk that the piercing will distort the final growth of the nipple and close up or partially impair the nipple.
Closed up or impaired nipples will cause a major amount of problems with breast feeding. Even if the piercing was placed where a structured 18 yr. old and onwards nipple is, the weight on the unformed 16 yr. olds nipple structure will compress the nipple internals and form in a distorted way. She may be 16 now, but the very parents who took her for her ‘cool’ nipple piercing will be scratching their heads as to why their new grandson is not getting the proper feeding off mum, remember parents, breast is best for your new grandchild and even though your daughter took the nipple piercing out years ago, the effects of it will be there to stay.
Some body piercing age limits are for a reason. It’s this easy, if you are 16 and contemplating having your nipples pierced, don’t.
Some fashionable piercings are really cool, take them out and they will never effect you, but getting your nipples pierced at 16 is both morally and medically wrong.