The Eyes (Don't) Have It

By Andrew Peerless in News on Mar 7, 2005 5:40PM

Is there anything more heartbreaking than searching for a reason to enter your friendly neighborhood body jewelry emporium, and realizing that you're already pierced from Prince Albert to eyebrow? Does anything smack of disappointment like the startling realization that you're just plain out of tattooable skin? Where can you turn when you've run out of body to modify?

Lucky for you, a Dutch institute is popularizing the next wave of body modification: eyeball jewelry... or, more specifically, the slight incision of the membrane covering the eyeball and insertion of a tiny metal heart or half-moon. Please excuse Chicagoist while the mere thought of this procedure causes us to frantically thrust our hands over our eyes and shriek like banshees.

Some Illinois lawmakers are pretty upset by this trend, as well, and in response to fears about potential ocular damage and infections from the precedure, are considering legislation that would make it a felony in Illinois to implant jewelry into someone's eye. See if you can grasp this erudite comment from Rep. Kevin Joyce: "I don't think anybody should be messing with the eyeball."

Well put.

In the U.S., this procedure is still pretty rare, and is currently available only from a small handful of doctors in California. As for its potential arrival in Illinois... well, Chicagoist kind of wants to file it under our "Is this really worthy of legislation?" file, but could also imagine a seedy world of back-street eyeball jewelry clinics and suppressing our gag reflexes as we sit on the el across from that goth girl with the horrendous-looking drippy infection.

(Shrieking again...)

Image courtesy of stylewithsubstance.com