Navel academy: The style-conscious hit fashion trend on the button

Wednesday, March 6, 2002 | 8:22 a.m.

Lying belly up in a medical-style chair in a back room at Tribal Piercing & Streetwear on South Maryland Parkway, 19-year-old Chantia Lail held still while Christopher Robin slid a catheter needle through the side of her navel.

"Do you feel light-headed, nauseous, queasy ... faint?" the 28-year-old piercer asked rhythmically before inserting a steel belly ring into Lail's midriff.

"No," she said.

Robin spun his chair around and proceeded to pierce the other side of Lail's belly for her second piercing of the day.

Her dark hair tucked behind her ears each pierced with 11 silver rings Lail is familiar with having her belly pricked for decorative adornment. Including the two new belly piercings, she has five metallic-blue rings encircling her navel.

"I like to do things in excess," she said. "I change them when I get bored with them."

Whether it's one ring or five, it seems these days that everybody is looking for something to put in, or around, their bellybuttons.

Dangling from above clothing waistlines are sparkling American flags, blinking lights, silver kitties, colored dice, jeweled flowers, chains, profanities and clever quips.

Even SpongeBob SquarePants, cable television's newest animated cartoon star, has a place on navel jewelry.

It's all about making a fashion statement, said 24-year-old Las Vegas resident Julie Foster, who pulled up her shirt recently at Tribal Piercing to reveal teal-blue rhinestones shimmering from her navel.

During the summer months, Foster said, she changes her belly ring every week to match her swimsuits and outfits.

By having her navel pierced five years ago, Foster beat the throngs of trendy teenagers who, for the past two years, have been filing into tattoo and piercing parlors.

"I was scared to death, too, because not everybody had it yet," she said. "Now it's kind of like another trend. It's like way back, when perms were popular."

Shelbi Martines, manager of the Hot Topic store at the Galleria at Sunset mall, where a large selection of navel jewelry is sold, said that navel piercing which used to be a cutting-edge trend is almost as common today as wearing earrings.

For around $20 just about anyone over age 18 can have his or her belly pierced. (However, "outies" can be more difficult to pierce and prone to irritation.)

Clark County reguires that those under age 18 have written consent and proper identification of and be accompanied by a parent or guardian to undergo body-piercing. Some places, however, will pierce children as young as 14, with parental consent.

Navel jewelry ranges from $10-$120 at local stores. At MyBellyRing.com, an online body-jewelry catalog, higher-end belly rings sell for as much as $895.

Nick Kokenes is a piercer at Diversity on South Maryland Parkway, where belly rings range from $20-$120 for solid 14-carat gold pieces. He said designers and manufacturers are becoming more creative with the jewels used in belly rings.

Though piercing is a trend among teenagers, it has nothing to do with age, Kokenes said. "My mom was 51 when she got it done."

But not everybody has to have a navel punctured to decorate his or her belly.

At local Claire's jewelry stores, clip-on belly rings, adhesive "glow lights," waist chains that rest on the hips, and temporary tattoos are sold.

Some department stores, such as Macy's, sell adhesive rhinestones to adorn the belly. Temporary henna-dye tattoos are also popular.

At Starborn Tattoos and Natural Mystic on Las Vegas Boulevard South, the starting price for a 2-by-2-inch henna tattoo is $10, Brent Strandberg, henna artist, said.

Customers can have anything from stars and moons to tribal designs applied to their stomaches.

"Anything you want pretty much," Strandberg said. "There is tons of stuff you can do. We stay pretty busy, especially during the summertime."

Strandberg said that the henna design will last on the body two to four weeks. Unlike piercing, there is no age requirement for the henna tattoos, and the procedure takes 20-40 minutes.

But Hill, 26, who has a silver barbell shooting through the center of his belly, prefers to be pierced.

Gesturing toward his pierced ears, nose, nipples and the piercing just below his bottom lip, Hill explained, "I like to be symmetrical all down the front."

"It's an art form," Hill said. "In the summer when I'm at the beach I like to put it all out."

Navel piercings are the most common body piercings that Robin at Tribal Piercing does. Most of his clients for navel piercings are teenage girls.

"It draws attention to their little tiny tummies," Robin said. "They're young. They're fit. They want to look good. They want to show off their tummy."

Robin, who moved to Las Vegas from San Francisco two years ago, said body piercing has been a common practice in the Bay Area since the 1970s.

"It was mostly confined to the East Coast and the West Coast, and it just traveled inward," he said.

"Navel piercings are very popular but it's really an awful piercing," Robin added, describing the aftereffects of the piercing. "The microscopic bits of dust, germs and bacteria will travel downward (in perspiration) to the open wound. It takes up to a year to heal."

Alternative plan

After her 14-year-old daughter came to her two years ago saying that she wanted to get her bellybutton pierced, Las Vegan Elizabeth Williams paused.

"It was kind of scary," Williams said.

But instead of telling her daughter "No," Williams said she explained that they should first get some information on navel piercing.

The two went to a local doctor, who gave them pamphlets about the risk of HIV and hepatitis and other infections and permanent scarring that could result from piercing the navel.

In the end, her daughter, Tera Williams, a student at Green Valley High School, decided against getting her navel pierced. But to adorn her belly, she tried different clip-on and adhesive belly rings that would later fall out.

So Elizabeth Williams attempted to create adhesive belly jewelry that remain in place for longer lengths of time, beginning with a crystal marble-and-false-eyelash adhesive -- an effort that she and Tera, now 16, turned into a business.

After two years spent working with designers to create semi-permanent navel jewelry that doesn't require piercing, the duo created Belly Rocks, nontoxic, water-resistant jewelry that is custom-designed and can be worn in the belly for several days. The jewelry is removed by using rubbing alcohol.

"This product is the-girl-next-door with a little bit of edge," Elizabeth Williams said of Belly Rocks, which can be ordered through BellyRocks.com. "It's very convincing, yet (wearers are) able to take it out."

"What has happened is that everybody expected the piercing phenomenon, which started to explode six years ago, to fade," Elizabeth Williams said. "I remember people saying, 'Oh, it's just a fad.' Seven years later it's still here and its growing."

Young girls see Britney Spears wearing a navel ring, Elizabeth Williams said, "and they can't help but want it."

Also, she added, when the fashion trend is to wear low-rise pants and short tops, more girls are tempted to decorate their bellies.

A local Claire's store manager, who asked not to be identified in keeping with company policy, said that children as young as 4 are interested in wearing the temporary belly rings that the store sells.

The jewelry store has merchandise that is geared toward children ages 14 and younger. It also sells belly rings for pierced navels. The average age for wearing the temporary belly rings, the store manager said, is 8.

Lance Louden, a piercer at Tribal Piercing, said that a lot of parents are bringing in their 12-year-olds to have the preteens' navels pierced.

"But we don't do that," Louden said. "The minimum age I'll pierce is 14. And that's iffy. It's a puncture wound. Therefore it is changing your body forever."

Louden said that when body piercing became more mainstream in 1994, it was mainly tongues and eyebrows that people were having pierced. Though navel piercing is pretty common, Louden pointed out that a lot of the people who come in to Tribal Piercing to be pierced are still pretty nervous.

"But it's like eating Cheerios in the morning," he said. "It's not really that big of deal."

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