I absolutely love tattoos and piercings, whether it's on me or on someone else.

I grew up hearing that people, specifically girls, should not get tattoos or piercings, especially not anywhere visible. These ideas come mostly from older generations, and if you asked them why they felt this way, they could give you a barrage of reasons.

"Tattoos don't look good."
"It's not lady-like."
"You come off as desperate for attention."

The list could go on. The one overwhelming response that you'd hear for why you shouldn't get tattoos or piercings is that it'll hinder your ability to get hired depending on what field you're in. In more artsy fields, of course, they encourage piercings and tattoos because they're a form of self-expression, but if you're going into a more professional field such as education or law, they're generally frowned upon.

When I made the decision to get my nose pierced for my eighteenth birthday, that was my mom's main concern. She worried that the piercing would affect my ability to get a job when I leave college, or even my ability to get an internship while I'm in college. I'm majoring in Molecular Genetics and Public Relations, so I'll either spend the rest of my life doing research in a lab or I'll be working in marketing for different companies. I don't see how me having a small nose stud could affect my ability to be hired, but that was a concern of my mother's. That, and she said I was, "violating my face."

I definitely made the right decision of going ahead and getting my piercing. I'm not worried about trying to get a job later at all.

The people that will be doing the hiring when I graduate will no longer be the generation of people that were anti-piercing and anti-tattoo, they will be the generation of rebels, the ones who said "screw the system" and went ahead and got their tattoos and piercings. We're becoming more accepting as a society of body modifications, and by the time I'm ready to enter the workforce full time, it won't be alarming to see an elementary school teacher with a full sleeve, or a brain surgeon with gauges.