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
Right and Wrong
When I was an eighteen-year-old freshman at Mizzou, way back in , I decided to flaunt my newfound noun 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 prove to your parents and the rest of the world that you are a certifiable bad boy, 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 hold saved me the ten bucks and done it herself. She favored the safety pin, ice cube, and raw potato method—which, in hindsight, would have given me much more street 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 ask me why I have an earring, and hoping to enlighten them, I always say that boys can have earrings, too. Then they inevitably ask why I only have 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
What Does a Single Earring Signify 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 pretty 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 short shorts, a tight 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
How did having piercings in the right ear become associated with homosexuality?
Obeseus21
I remember in the early 80s that left ear was straight and right ear was gay, though I knew several guys who had just their right ear pierced, and they weren’t gay. There reasoning was that they wanted an earring, and they didn’t want it showing in their left ear in case they got pulled over by a cop.
md
That’s not an urban legend, there is a well defined color code to indicate just about every fetish and left side means you like that fetish as a top/active (depending on fetish) and right is bottom/passive. It’s not used as much these days, but it’s not even remotely legend.
Most of these stories I gave as much credence as the “smoking banana peels” thing, which IIRC was a joke that some people did not get, so they tried to smoke peels. (Probably the placebo effect).
Similarly, I saw the argument that most motorcycle gangs were mostly modelled on Marlon Brando’s film “The Wild One”, a case of life imitating art imitating life. I wonder if a lot of this sort of hank