Pierced 2

 According to Desmond Morris, in some parts of the world, a woman needs to have long, dangly earlobes in order to be considered beautiful. Mutilation begins in infancy, with increasingly heavy earrings being attached to holes in the earlobes in order to stretch them: 'by puberty, only the girls with the longest ears are considered to be beautiful.' ('The Naked Woman', Desmond Morris, Jonathan Cape 2004) The size and number of earrings- apparently up to 1 kg of metal dangling from each lobe-  appears excessively high to the likes of me, and a considerable burden. But I must confess that I do have pierced ears, onto which I attach generally modest items- nothing larger than, say, a teaspoon. I'm not tempted to acquire more holes, or elsewhere, but others seem to go overboard; the piercings spread and multiply like a rash.. 

.. a little nose ring appears, and then a stud or two. Bit by bit, the wearer is eroded..

.. until very little of use remains..