The most common dangerous side effect of a piercing is bacterial infection. This is when the area around your new piercing turns red and swells and is often very painful! Be sure to clean it regularly with saline solution and soap and water in the shower, or with antibiotics.

Some areas with a lot of cartilage, like the top of your ear, can be much more dangerous to pierce because they can be harder to treat if they get infected. Antibiotics aren’t enough to treat the infection and sometimes the area will develop an abscess ( a collection of pus in the tissue) which then has to be drained by medical professionals. Yikes!

It’s also very important that you go to a well-known piercing parlor where the piercers wear plastic gloves and use sterilized needles. Be sure the place looks clean and make sure the autoclave (the machine that sterilizes needles) is working properly. If it is they should have a current Spore test that shows that the autoclave has been tested and approved. When needles aren’t sterilized infections can be easily transmitted. That’s why it is dangerous to try to pierce yourself or have a friend do it. Also be sure to get a set of aftercare instructions, so you know how to care for your piercing!
Piercings can be expensive too, usually at least fifty dollars, and if you’re not eighteen you need a parent to come to the piercing parlor with you.

Piercings can be fun and exciting, but I recommend waiting till you’re older to know for sure whether you want one or not! If you get a piercing and take it out later, it can sometimes leave an ugly scar! And yes piercings can hurt! Basic ear piercings in your earlobe aren’t too painful, but cartilage can hurt a lot! Also a lot of the time the initial piercing isn’t too bad, but the weeks and even months it can take to heal can be painful.

So be sure you think a long time about whether you really want a piercing, and always ask your parents for permission first! If you have any other questions about piercings or stories to share feel free to post a comment!

Hey Girl Bloggers! Check out these women’s amazing athletic accomplishments!

Thirty-one year old Mary Akor (pictured on right) was the first woman to cross the finish line this year with a time of 2 hours, 38 minutes, and 50 seconds, and she won the grand prize of ten thousand dollars! She was the previous woman champion from last year’s race as well. Mary is from Nigeria and currently resides in California.
The second place runner, Margaret Toroitich, from Kenya was less than three minutes behind her.

Another champion woman was twenty-four year old Sally Meyerhoff (pictured on left) from Arizona who finished third out of the women. An American born woman hasn’t made the top three finishers since 1998, so this was a big triumph for her as well.

It inspires me to hear of the amazing athletic accomplishments of these women. Running a marathon is such a great triumph! It’s incredible to think of the physical feats your body can accomplish when you put your mind to it! Do any of you girls have dreams of running a marathon someday? What athletic accomplishments are you proud of!?

The girls critiqued this idea through writing and discussing with peers, and they realized that companies are benefiting by encouraging girls to be thin because they then profit from the sales of all the weight loss products out on the market. The girls in the study chose to counter this notion through their own small actions which they called “body activism.” Some of the girls slipped encouraging notes like, “Love your body the way it is” into diet books at bookstores, and some wrote letters to the maker of Barbie dolls, Mattel, and encouraged them to make their Barbie’s bodies more realistically proportioned. Other girls put up notes in their school’s bathrooms telling girls that they are beautiful and should be themselves.

According to the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology the participants in this Study reduced the risk of developing eating disorders by 61 percent! Also the girls continued to have a positive attitude about their body image even after three years of completion of the program. Because of the positive results of this study, sororities and other groups are launching similar programs.

Do you ever feel pressured by the media to be thin? What do you girl bloggers think about this Body Project? Do you think it was worthwhile? How would you feel if your school started a similar program?