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Body Modification and the Corporate World
Until the age of 30, I had only minimal body modifications. I had gotten my ears pierced twice on each earlobe as a teenager, but so had many other girls in my age group. The day I turned 30, I got my first tattoo--just a small design that I had been considering since I was 20, placed carefully so that it would be concealed by normal workplace clothing. They say, however, that once you get your first tattoo, you will keep going back for more. Almost three years later, I have six tattoos, and have also added two visible piercings. My tattoos are still all fairly easily concealed, but my new piercings are my cartilage (not too extreme) and my nostril (a little more extreme, but tolerable). As I continue to feel the bite of the tattooing and piercing bug, I wonder just how long I will be able to keep all of my body art under wraps in the workplace. My previous job was in academia, where some degree of body modification is acceptable. I had considerably less visible signs of body modification than many of the students around me. I do suspect that many people outside of my department thought I was just another student, but my co-workers knew that regardless of how I chose to adorn my body, I was hard-working and dedicated. The body modifications did not bother them, because these did not change who I was as a co-worker. My boss would occasionally tease me about my nostril piercing, but it was always a friendly joke, revealing more than anything else the generation gap between us. Having recently moved to a new city, I found myself in the position of looking for a new job. As I prepared for interviews, I had to think long and hard about what I intended to do about my body modifications. Business dress easily conceals all of my tattoos, and my ear piercings, even the cartilage, are standard enough. But then we arrive at the nostril piercing. Should I remove the small sparkly gem from the side of my nose, or should I leave it in, and hope that the companies with which I would interview will accept it as a part of me? Does it look better to have that sparkly gem, or better to have a possibly noticeable hole in my nose? I was a little torn on this decision. I have a clear retainer that can be put into the piercing, but I'm not sure if that really helps to conceal it, or if it draws more attention to my piercing. As it turns out, I accidentally packed the retainer when we were packing up everything in the apartment. I got a phone call on the day we were loading the moving truck, asking me to interview a couple of days after we arrived. Since we were not personally driving our belongings cross-country, I didn't have access to my nostril retainer until two days after I interviewed--which happened to be the same day they called me to offer me the job. I went to my interview with my sparkly little gem right there in plain sight. Better to let them know what they're getting, I suppose. My one saving grace in all of this is that I moved from a small town to a big city. In this setting, body modifications are much more common than they were where I lived previously. A simple nostril piercing is not going to cause anyone to look twice. Perhaps if I had a number of facial piercings, strangely colored hair, or visible tattoos, it would be another story. But those are the kind of things on which I am willing to wait. For now, I just keep my tattoos covered and my nose to the grindstone, to let them know that regardless of my oddities, I am still a hard worker. Once I have established myself as an asset to the company, then I can bring up the topic of partially visible tattoos, and see where the boundaries lie.
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May, 2012
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