News 8 – Blythe, California is the scene of this newest disturbing trend, gauging your child’s earlobes. At the Sandy Shore Strip Mall, irresponsible mothers bring their children in for their ears to be stretched while their babies scream in agony. Britney Mosse, 19, thought it would be fun for her little boy to have this done to him. An eyewitness recalls what she saw happen to the child, “She sets her child in the parlor chair, with tears streaming down his face while his mother looks on with a reassuring grin. The woman in charge of the gauging enters the room carrying a sharp instrument as she steps towards Britney’s son. The woman leans down to remove the small studded earring from his ear then pull several disposable cotton swabs from her apron pocket to begin cleaning the tiny hole where the earring once was. The little boy’s cry is all they can be heard as the woman brings the sharp, pencil size prong to the boys ear. She puts it into the small opening and painfully begins forcing it through. As the little boys ear begins to stretch and bleed, the boy cries in agony, ‘Mommy I love you! Why are you doing this to me!’ It was the most awful thing I have ever seen.”
The fad of “gauging out” your child’s ear is being called a violation of your children’s rights and just pure abuse by child advocates who say that “forcibly deforming your child for life through a torture sessions to get you time in the county jail.” Practical Parenting Magazine defends this act by saying in their magazine: “You get a twist on the classic toddler’s ear piercing, while introducing your child to ethnic and cultural diversity with a stretched lobe. This fashion accessory is not just for Third World countries anymore. Now your child can look just as hip with it as the children you see in National Geographic Magazine. It’s fashion forward, and practical. With the added extra holes in your child’s ears, your toddler will appear more tough than the other toddlers in its preschool, ensuring it never gets picked on or bullied for appearing to ‘wussy’.”
But again, child advocacy groups say this is obvious child abuse. They suggest that the parents and the shop owners should be held responsible and locked away. They say the children should be placed in protective custody, in a loving and caring home where they will never have to worry about being hurt, tortured and deformed for life. They are also suggesting the parents should be sterilized so they cannot reproduce in the future.
For now, “gauging out” your toddler’s ears is still legal. There are no laws against this practice and it remains the parents right to choose whether or not their child has the modification done to their lobes.