Which side earring is gay
Why Did We Expand 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 prefer everyone I met, no matter their place of beginning, knew and understood the earring code, as arbitrary as it seems.
It was even solidified in the New York Times: A 1991 report said homosexual men “often [wore] a single piece of jewelry in the right ear to indicate sexual preference.” In 2009, 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 earrings have indicated wisdom and sympathy in the stretched earlobes of the Buddha, while pirat
Right and Wrong
When I was an eighteen-year-old freshman at Mizzou, way back in 1990, I decided to flaunt my newfound autonomy 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 own 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 when I was young.” Men like Harrison Ford, Michael Jordan, and Ed Bradley wore one earring in tho
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