Gay one earring
Why Did We Grow Up Thinking a Piercing in the Right Ear Was Gay?
On the playground, it was a truth so firmly established that defying it meant social suicide: If you have an earring in your right ear, it means you’re gay. We accepted it as gospel and never questioned its validity.
It may have been the subtle homophobia of my Illinois community in the ’90s. But as I grew up, it seemed like everyone I met, no matter their place of origin, knew and understood the earring code, as arbitrary as it seems.
It was even solidified in the New York Times: A report said gay men “often [wore] a single piece of jewelry in the right ear to indicate sexual preference.” In , the Times covered it yet again, in TMagazine: “the rule of thumb has always been that the right ear is the gay one,” the author wrote about his own piercing journey.
Historically speaking, the truth is more complex. Earrings on guys have signified many things over the years, such as social stature or religious affiliation. In his book The Naked Man: A Study of the Male Body, Desmond Morris explains that earring
What Does a Available Earring Mean on a Man?
The reaction to Harry Styles’s semi-sheer Gucci Met Gala outfit this year wasmixed, but onlookers agreed on one thing: His single pearl earring was the accessory of the night.
One-sided and off-balance, the single dangly earring is back. In the mid-’80s, it was sported by Rob Lowe in St. Elmo’s Fire, Bob Dylan at Live Aid, and George Michael lovely much everywhere. It even traveled into the ’90s in the form of Michael Jordan’s gold hoop. And now it’s reemerged. “Old Town Road” rapper Lil Nas X often performs in a hanging-cross earring. Flamboyant reggaeton singer Bad Bunny regularly wears an even longer one. Onscreen, Julio Torres sports a singly dangly and blue hair in Los Espookys. And in the trailer for American Horror Story: , Cody Fern smolders in impossibly limited shorts, a compact tank, and a lopsided piercing.
From left: Michael, Kam. Photo: Emily Soto
The look isn’t confined to celebrities. Per one meme, the earring is in favor among “gays, musicians, artists, goths, skaters, and bisexuals,” or, as one earring-wearer ph
Earrings and Gay Men
William Rasschaert
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I wish to throw this out there and see if anyone has an view on this.
As my partner and I were walking around Boston on Saturday we got into a
discussion about the aforementioned subject. I think that male lover men who get
earrings and have them installed in their left ear are simply hypocrits
to everything we claim we are against. I mean, if you are gay and are
trying to pass yourself off as straight, is that not hypocritical? I
know that the old rules about the left and right ears is no longer used,
but some of my friends got earrings, and they are gay, and put them in
their left ears. They say they keep people guessing, I say that one look
at them, minus the earring, and they would not have to guess as to their
orientation
Right and Wrong
When I was an eighteen-year-old freshman at Mizzou, way back in , I decided to flaunt my newfound self-rule from my parents by getting an ear pierced. What a rebel I was! If getting a piercing while sitting in a comfy chair at Claire’s Boutique in the Columbia Mall doesn’t demonstrate to your parents and the rest of the world that you are a certifiable bad teen, then nothing will.
Travis Naughton
When my dad first saw my new earring, he rolled his eyes and laughed. When my mom saw it, she said she could have saved me the ten bucks and done it herself. She favored the guard pin, ice cube, and raw potato method—which, in hindsight, would have given me much more highway cred than a trip to a boutique.
Nevertheless, I’ve worn an earring for the better part of three decades now. Kids at school often seek me why I contain an earring, and hoping to enlighten them, I always say that boys can have earrings, too. Then they inevitably request why I only acquire one ear pierced.
Until last week, my answer has been, “Lots of men have one earring. It’s just what some men did back w