Body piercer gets paid to pinch
Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services
Iqaluit (Feb 19/01) - The first time Aleeta Strickland shot a gun in 1993, it was a bad experience.
The body piercer lined up the piercing gun to her client's ear and pressed down.
"The gun refused to let go and it clamped on to her ear," she explained.
Nobody told her about a lock on the gun, used as a safety device.
"I can still see the look on the girl's face, and I don't know whose was worse -- her's or mine," she said.
The client came out of it fine, and so did Strickland, although the incident felt like a lifetime, she said.
Strickland, who was training in Nova Scotia in '93, swore she would never pierce another piece of human flesh again.
"I was thrown back into it," she said, explaining how her instructor coaxed her into trying another piercing at noon hour when no one else was around.
Strickland, who moved to Iqaluit in 1995, now punches holes in anyone's earlobes or noses on Saturdays at D.J. Sensations.
The owners are good friends of hers. She said some Saturdays are constantly busy, but other times not a single customer shows up.
And she doesn't believe in piercing anything she would not have pierced herself for safety reasons. She will not pierce eyebrows, for instance, because they are too close to the optic nerve for her liking.
"It's a personal thing," she said. "There are some people out there who have done this and never had a problem."
Strickland is also against home-piercings. She has learned about a lot about health and sanitation and, for her, it is imperative that hands never touch flesh.
"You are dealing with someone else's body, and in this day and age. You are passing bodily fluids," she said.
Strickland has a full-time job, but enjoys putting holes in people's in the ears or nose every Saturday, she said.
"I used to tell everyone it was stress relief," she said. "It's the only place you can get paid to hurt someone," she said with a laugh.
