What Wendy Wore: Bendel’s Ruffles for an Ear Piercing

When I was writing yesterday’s post about the closing of retailer Henri Bendel, I couldn’t find a proper outfit photo of the cropped, ruffled jacket I got there 10 years ago. I wore the jacket today to rectify that.

My jewelry-designing friend Julie Lamb took this photo after we went to New York Adorned to see Cassi Lopez, my favorite ear piercer. Julie and I last went to visit Cassi in 2016, and I’ve been wanting to go back ever since. As a jewelry designer, I love following piercers’ Instagrams, and I see so many great piercers doing a “curated” ear, but Cassi is the best. She has a unique sense of proportion and balance, often adding tiny new piercings around old, poorly placed ones. It’s feng shui for ears! If you go see her, I recommend letting her look at your anatomy in order to make a suggestion. Today, she studied both my ears and recommended a piercing in a little fold I have at the top of my left ear.

When I was in elementary school, I was the opposite of Dumbo because I didn’t get teased for having big ears — I got teased for having tiny ears. Some folks have Bette Davis eyes; I have Peter Griffin ears.

Peter Griffin from Family Guy.

What I got teased for more than the size of my ears, though, was that little fold on the left side. As you can see, I don’t have that fold on the right side.

The right ear is tiny but not folded.

Don’t cry for me, Argentina, because thoughts about the size and shape of my ears truly don’t keep me up at night! I’m just fascinated by the way children zero in on the most minute physical quirks. Their eyes are like damn microscopes and there’s no filter between their brains and mouths, so you never know what they’re going to blurt out. Anyway, what I’m getting to is that when it comes to jewelry and physical features that are slightly less than perfect in the eyes of first-graders, it can be fun to accentuate the “negative“, rather than the positive. For instance, I’ve never been hand-model material, and when I realized dainty rings didn’t do anything to give me long, elegant fingers, I decided, “Fuck it, I’m going to wear huge rings on every finger.”

Similarly, it gives me special pleasure to have my latest piercing located on the little ear fold that was such a big deal on the playground.

For those keeping count, this is my sixth piercing on my left ear. I’ve got five on the right ear. That’s up from the three piercings I managed to get by with from 1983 to 2014. I’m sure Cassi will find room for a few more before I have to start putting holes in other body parts.

You can check out today’s piercing process on my YouTube channel.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my channel while you’re there!