Is the 90s Belly Button Ring Making a Comeback?
Right now, my rabbi is texting me to ask if I can join him and his family for Shabbat dinner. But I can’t: I’m flat on my back at New York Adorned, the popular East Village tattoo and piercing parlor, ready to have a needle plunged through my belly button. In a way, I don’t know why I am here. Maybe it’s because I have been on some bizarre Limp Bizkit kick? Or is it because I’m currently obsessed with Aaliyah and her knack for pulling off low-slung denim and itty-bitty crop tops? Whatever it is, I try to convince my piercer, Cassi, that I’m doing this for the sole purpose of a work assignment—but I’m lying. I have been talking about getting this minor form of body modification done for months.
Up until now, I have managed to ignore the protestations of my friends, including the one who showed me a less-than-flattering recent photo of Britney Spears with Starbucks in tow, sans the hyper-toned physique of her nineties pop heyday, and the colleague who quipped, "It will stretch when you have kids! Please rethink your decision—it’s trashy!" I even waved away the concerns of my mother: She begged me to stick to the classics and "buy a pencil skirt" instead. Because as admittedly sophomoric as this decision may be, I’m a full-grown adult—not a teenager—and I’m dead set on seeing it through.
While Cassi sterilizes my editorial-worthy innie, I take a deep breath and tell myself that the pain will be nothing, but as the needle hits my skin, it feels like a demon has pinched my stomach with a pair of pliers. I scream out a sentence of strangely strung-together expletives and briefly contemplate what I am doing with my life.
Ten minutes later, I walk out a bit lightheaded, now with a tiny stainless-steel hoop inserted into my navel. I like it. It’s not a bang of bling, like a rhinestone-encrusted, dangling Playboy bunny of the noughties, but rather a simple whisper of chic sheen. As I exit, a colleague randomly spots me on the street and Snapchats herself poking at the new, slightly inflamed abdominal ornament. In an instant, all of my officemates have seen my plush stomach glimmer via social media.
I start to form a defense for my return to the office: A belly button ring is irreverent—an insouciant, proverbial symbol for "whatever," exhibited by your body. Besides, it’s no secret the nineties are back. Every Instagram feed I follow has some sort of cheeky Clueless or Kate Moss–and–Naomi Campbell reference in its midst. And speaking of Campbell, she and Christy Turlington walked the runway with bejeweled abdomens in the early nineties. Not to mention that almost every cool girl of the time had a navel piercing, too: There’s Gwen Stefani, the era’s fearless stage diver, and Rose McGowan, the moody chick everyone still wants to be. Even the wildly smoldering Fiona Apple—and she strung a body chain through hers!
Turns out, it’s not just me. The influence of the nineties is making belly button piercings a thing again. And according to Cassi, even women who had their navels pierced in the nineties are coming back to get them re-pierced, this time sans the naughty barbell or dangly bijou. "I attribute it to the resurgence of nineties fashion—mainly the crop top," she says. Only now "women are refitting their old piercings with thin gold rings, which keep the look a bit more subtle." And although as a professional she prefers to do fresh piercings with barbell fittings for healing purposes, "nine out of ten people end up changing the jewelry to gold hoops," she admits.
While I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one embracing the trend, I still feel nervous heading to work on Monday. Will my colleagues shudder when they see it? Will I be banished to the copy room forever? At the last minute, I throw on a high-waisted pencil skirt—something I would normally never wear—in place of my favorite knotted tee and hip-grazing jeans in an effort to subconsciously negate (or in this case, hide) the strip mall associations of my umbilical bauble.
But by the end of the week, I’ve fallen in love with my navel piercing, trading the pencil skirt in favor of low-waisted pants and an abbreviated top that reveals a sliver of my abdomen. The tiny semipermanent accessory has given me a strange shock of confidence: Unlike pre-pierced me, I find myself standing up a little straighter, now unafraid of my exposed midriff, and doing more crunches to tone up. The next week, I let it peek out from under a hacked-off shirt on three dates—and even go for a run through Central Park in my sports bra. After all, a belly button ring is for showing, not hiding. And I’m letting mine shine—even in 2015.