This Is The Best Place To Get Your Ears Pierced (It's Not The Doctor!)

When I was younger, almost everyone I knew got their ears pierced at the Claire’s in the local mall. It was quick, cheap, and seemingly harmless. Plus, it was a lot less scary than going to the local tattoo parlor. That’s why I was surprised when my aunt took my little cousin to the tattoo shop to get her ears pierced. I didn’t even think they would let a 7-year-old into the store. My aunt explained that the mall is the worst place to get your ears pierced. This is because piercing guns can be very dangerous to your health.

Although most mall kiosks disinfect their tools, you can’t actually sterilize a piercing gun because they are made of plastic. Piercing guns are also less exact and can damage your earlobe. It might seem intimating, but best place to get your ears pierced is actually a tattoo parlor. Good Housekeeping spoke to John Joyce, a professional piercer and the owner of Scarab Body Arts. He explained that tattoo parlors serialize instruments like needles, jewelry, and any other tools they might use in the piercing process in an autoclave (a strong heated container used for steam sterilization). Plastic piercing guns used at mall kiosks cannot be put in an autoclave because they will melt.

Not only are tattoo parlors more sterile, but they are more exact and result is less damage to your earlobe. According to Good Housekeeping, piercing guns ram the earring posts through the earlobe, while a professional piercer is more deliberate in creating the puncture, so there’s a difference in the degree of trauma sustained by the surrounding tissue. The needles used in tattoo parlors remove a core of flesh to pierce the ear, whereas piercing guns jam a blunt-tipped earring stud into the earlobe. This does not remove skin, but pushes it aside. It sounds scary, but it’s actually a more sterile and precise process (read more here). Plus, think about it this way: would you rather have mall employee or a professional piercer stick a sharp object through your ears? It’s a no brainier.