I. Introduction
A. Many people though out society look down upon people with facial and body piercings especially if they have more than just their ears which is more socially expectable.
B. Within the US many people use getting piercings for many reasons like tradition, cultural reasoning’s, and aesthetics. However, piercings are considered to be a personal journey, this changes from culture to culture.
C. The origins of body piercing date back thousands of years. As an ancient style of body adornment, body piercing practices have been important for cultural rituals and as expressions of beauty (Shafiei, "Origins of Body Piercing").
II. Cultural Reasoning’s
A. There are many cultural reasoning’s for the nose piercing, throughout ancient history to today’s society.
1. The practice of nose piercing is still followed among the nomadic Berber and Beja tribes of Africa and the Bedouins of the Middle East. The size of the ring gifted denotes a family's wealth. It's given by a husband to his wife when they marry, and it represents financial security for her in the event that she and her husband are divorced ("History of Body Piercings").
2. In the west, nose piercing first appeared among the hippies who had traveled to India in the Late 1960s. In the 1970s, the practice of nose piercing was adopted by the Punk movement as a symbol of rebellion against conservative values. Most conservative people, mainly parents and employers, still don't react well to this piercing along with other facial piercings (“History of Body Piercings”).
B. Tongue piercing
1 Tongue piercings was practiced in a ritual form by the ancient Aztecs and the Maya of Central America. The tongue was pierced to draw blood to appease the gods and to create an altered state of consciousness so that the priest or shaman could communicate with the gods (“History of Body Piercings”).
3. Middle Eastern cultures, such as the Sufis, have practiced tongue piercing to demonstrate