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#the Crimson Peak ladies probably did have pierced ears and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel probably didn't
marzipanandminutiae · 2 years
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You made a post stating that pierced ears weren’t accepted in America from the 20s to 60s, but I was under the impression that many women, esp in the 40s and 50s, often wore classic Pearl or diamond stud earrings. Have I been deceived by Hollywood again?? :c
Clip-ons and screw-backs, my dear Anon!
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(Screw-back earrings, c. 1950s)
Piercing your ears was frowned upon, but wearing earrings remained wildly popular. I don't understand the logic here, since it looks functionally identical to wearing pierced earrings in practice, but apparently that was A-okay.
Earring clamped onto your ear? Fine! That exact same earring going through your ear? DIRTY AND/OR FOREIGN HARLOT.
Make it make sense.
(Pierced earrings DID still exist, since some women- for cultural or personal reasons -bucked the zeitgeist. But they were by far the less common of the two options.)
(Also, clips and screw-backs hurt in my experience. Like. You have your ear pinched in a vise for as long as you're wearing them, basically. My mom, born 1953, remembers Grandma taking her clip earrings off the second she got home from a party, always. And yet I saw clips advertised as "torture-free" earrings in a 1930s ad. Yes, skip the torture of like 30 seconds with a needle for the comfort and ease of clamping something heavy onto your ear with sheer pressure, all day long.)
(The whole "pierced ears bad" fad makes about the least sense to me of any fashion-related historical Hot Take.)
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