I finally got the piercing I always wanted. And I'm coming full circle.

It looks little. But it feels big.

I got a nose ring. Finally. I have been thinking about it since 2009, but only in 2023 had the guts to do it. That is a long time of wavering within myself. Hopefully the last time that I will do THAT. Not the piercing — the wavering.

Me and my shiny new nose ring…. white hair and all….

The reason I know EXACTLY when I started thinking about this is that….. well…..I blogged about it. (Of course I did.) My VERY FIRST column in the Forward Sisterhood, where I ended up being a contributor for around ten years, was all about my daughter’s nose ring. She was 16 years old at the time (today she is a 30-year-old mother of two, to give you some perspective). I was torn between the religious-mother voice in my head saying that I should be restrictive about this, and the voice of the not-yet-liberated-woman — the more authentically me voice — that actually thought that her nose ring was beautiful. Here is some of what I wrote at the time:

[W]hen my daughter announced at one Shabbat lunch that this is what she intends to do with her face, most of the reactions were pretty harsh. But I can’t help but wonder why. Why do people – especially religious Jews – view a nose piercing as a symbol of mutiny, rebellion, or promiscuity? It’s just a stud, for heaven’s sake!…. Yet, there is this incredible stigma, as in, ‘Oh, nose ring, she’s clearly off the wall, or off the derech’ (meaning the path, or “OTD” as it is known in the Ortho-blogosphere).

Indeed, one of the (predictable) commenters wrote at the time that I should be concerned because it is “well-known” that body piercings are associated with dangerous behaviors. I replied, “Well-known by whom? Do you have any actual research to back that up?” Of course he didn’t, because there is none. The idea that piercings are a sign of girls’ poor judgment and disobedience is not science — it’s sexist stereotype. It’s just one of many assumptions about girls and women based on how we look, based on how appearance fits into the landscape of the person doing the gazing and judging. We are meant to be unobtrusive, able to fade to the background, not too loud, not too showy, not attention-getting, not taking up space. Somehow the nose ring violates all of that. The objections are not about anything real or meaningful, nor about women’s or girls’ actual lives. They are just another exercise in men trying to keep women in our place.

What I wrote in that essay, somewhat hesitatingly — as if I were trying to convince myself, was, “Truth is, if I’m going to be honest with myself, that I kind of like it. Actually I would say that I think it’s beautiful.”

I have had that thought in my head ever since — and in fact, my two other daughters have since ALSO got nose rings, as well as a few other piercings, and they are all good, and stunning, and amazing.

It is beautiful. And yet it has taken me this long to fully own those thoughts in my head.

So when my daughter-in-law told me that she was taking my niece, Tari, out to get nose rings for Tari’s 21st birthday, and invited me to join, it was a resounding YES.

L to R, My niece Tari, my daughter-in-law Sophie, and me, with our new piercings. These women keep me young. Lucky me <3

The experience was very powerful. It reconnected me with my youthful self, it helped me own my voice, and it gave me permission to decide for myself what I do with my body.

All of which is part of my recovery from my religious upbringing, and so much more.

Ultimately, as I explored at length in my book, Conversations with my Body, the experience of allowing myself to want, of giving myself permission to feel for myself, and of validating my body’s own desires, these are things that are absent in the socialization of many girls in different cultures and families. In Orthodoxy, although many religious girls today are supported by families that encourage girls’ free-thinking and independent choices, the culture itself does not by default have language for girls’ desire. On the contrary, Orthodoxy is inundated with aggressive language about how girls and women have to comport our body cover, our voices, and our sexuality to the dictates of men — whether those men are halakhic authors, day school teachers, or fathers and husbands. The male gaze on the female body is the final say, and the idea that women and girls should dress according to their own comfort is not a concept that exists anywhere in the cultural literature or discourse.

And it’s not just Orthodox Judaism. There are many cultures and families where women’s and girls’ needs and desires are not really a thing. Where it is assumed that we will be in service — service of our husbands, of our kids, of our communities, of our nations. The tactic of dismissing women’s physical and emotional needs in favor of something else — the religion, the collective, men — is everywhere. Just look at what the US Supreme Court just did in overturning Roe. Our own body autonomy is still not a predominant cultural value.

In that sense, getting the nose ring was another leg on my journey of recovery from all this. I realize you might be thinking that it took me quite a long time to own it. I’ve been on thus journey for a while. But, you know what, that’s okay. I’m okay with the meanderings of my life, and I choose to comfort myself even as I deal with my own internalized self-judgment coming from all directions.

I’m glad to be here. I’m glad to be at a place in my life where I’m finally doing what I want to do. Even if the debate is sometimes still raging in my head.

One final thought: Maybe the fact that I spent the past two years growing out my white hair helped. It’s not that I disagree that dark hair makes me look younger and more socially acceptable. It’s that the white hair is actually who I am, and I decided that I’m tired of all the effort and energy I have put in to try and be something that I’m not. But the white hair is the subject for another blog. I’ll just leave here that all of this is a process of giving myself permission to be who I am, to want what I want, and to choose for myself without guilt or shame. Just me. Just joy in being me. That’s where I am.

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