The Metalface

Unfortunately, unlike my past experiences, nothing off-the-wall happened at 42nd and 5th when I was leaving the library today (again, NOT the lionbrary (oh my dear god, when I Googled "Manhattan library," this was one of the top images. Google knows me so well. Kind of like Pandora. I feel like I say it every day, but I'll repeat it: I will never find a man who understands me like my Pandora radio does. If I ever do...well, I digress from my parenthetical notes). I go to the library across the street from the big one).

However, a trip to the library never leaves me without at least some minor amusement. When I was getting on the train, I saw a girl. She was a relatively normal-looking Latina girl in jeans and a tee, probably in high school and still high schoolishly skinny, not fully grown into all the benefits of her Latinaness (I wanted to offer her some ice cream or something to help her along, but I think people take it badly when you offer strange kids sweets). Totally normal. Except for the bar of metal going through her face.

Seriously. I'm cool with piercings; I mostly think they're pretty hot. But this shit was a huge metal chunk under her left eye and above her cheekbone. It may not have been that bad (don't click on that link if you have an especially girlish stomach), except that it kind of highlighted where the bottom of her under-eye circle is and made her look, for lack of better words, old haggish and trashy as hell. I have attempted to make a re-creation of her face below:

Is this a thing? Did the under-eye aging piercing become a trend that I missed in my Ohio and then Syracuse-grounded existence?

TOTAL SIDENOTE: Google has also just taught me that this is a trend in Japan, apparently. Chris C. says, "This is #8 on my list of “Things I Didn't Know Were Things But Shouldn't Be Anyway”" and now I want to know what his other things were, too. I just thought you should know. I think everyone should know. You should probably make a memo.