Earrings Pierce the Sex Barrier

Once they were for women only, a feminine fashion detail that men used at their own risk, and then only in an ear that wouldn’t send the wrong message. But earrings for men have come a long way since fishermen wore them to show they’d survived a shipwreck, and since hippies sported them to be anti-Establishment.

Men’s earrings still encounter some flickers of disapproval, and they are by no means widely accepted in conservative business environments. Yet more and more men are wearing them, and a stud in the earlobe can no longer be taken as a statement of a man’s rebellion against society, much less his sexual orientation.

‘Lots of Guys Wear Earrings’

“It’s a trend, and it’s gradually getting higher,” said Grace Dulnuan, manager of Maya, a jewelry store on Melrose Avenue that caters to single-earring buyers. “The movie media and music videos show lots of guys wearing earrings. Little kids grow up and want their ear pierced, they want to be those people on the TV screen.”

Take, for instance, Stephen Poe, a Canoga Park writer of corporate films and high-tech videos. He got tired of suiting up to stodgy, corporate-style dressing. So he now wears whatever he feels like to free-lance jobs, and has traded his tie (for good, he adds) for an earring.

Like Poe, Matthew Ross, a Westwood-based electrical-system designer for hotels, wears an earring to work, but tries to remember to pull it out when he attends client meetings. “It’s an extra added factor I don’t need possibly working against me,” he confesses. “It gives you a tad less credibility.”

Juan Price, a Torrance construction worker, wore a diamond-stud earring on the job for six years, but decided to go without it at his new construction outfit, “which is a much bigger and stricter company.” Instead, he settles for wearing the earring on weekends and at social occasions.

Men who wore earrings used to have to buy them in women’s sections, or handcraft their earrings themselves, as Poe does. But within the last five to seven years, boutiques along Melrose Avenue and in other trendy sections have begun featuring single earrings. And some fine-jewelry shops and major department stores will sell a single earring stud with a diamond or other gem.

The idea got popular “in the late ‘70s to early ‘80s, kind of when punk started,” said Sheri Magid, who has worked for 10 years at Imperial Drug Co., one of few advertisers in the Los Angeles Yellow Pages under “Ear Piercing.”

“You had a lot of rebellious types doing it then,” she said, “but now it’s become more of a norm. You see a lot of preppies and college students doing it.” And, she added, musicians are especially into the fashion.

Why would a man want to decorate his earlobe?

“We’re holdovers from the old days, ex-hippies,” said 52-year-old Brian Lantin, owner of a picture-frame shop in West Hollywood.

Price said: “It’s a rebellion thing: Dress the way you want. A lot of people think earrings are effeminate. So if you think you’re a big enough man, you can put one on and no one is going to tell you anything. I can handle it OK.”

Ross, 34, pierced his ear on the last day of his 29th year. “I was close to 30, my hair was falling out so I couldn’t grow it long. I was thinking about aging. I was trying not to feel too over-the-hill.” The earring succeeded in making him feel younger “for about 20 minutes,” he said.

“I think a lot of people that came out of Vietnam did it,” he added. “It’s a little bit of a vague identification to an era--identification with a culture that was slightly offbeat.”

Poe believes it’s an expression of a desire to be different, and he said he has found that an earring can be an asset in the creative arena. . . . It helps cast an image of artistry.

“Some corporate types think if you’re a writer, you have to look a little different. And that if you don’t look a little different, you can’t be creative,” he said.

The degree of acceptance sometimes depends on the generation.

“The younger people find it’s so common it’s nothing, it’s passe now,” said Price, 27. “The older guys (which he defined as 40-plus) get a kick out of it. It stigmatizes to them that you’re a doper or a homosexual.”

Bill Saleebey of Marina del Rey noticed that attitudes about men wearing earrings varied among occupations. He got his ear pierced at 36 when he was a community college psychology professor and wore it to classes for four years.

“It was a liberal enough environment that it was accepted,” he said.

Now a salesperson for a moving company, he has quit wearing the earring. “It would without a doubt hurt my credibility in sales,” said the 40-year-old Saleebey.

Price said about 10 of every 25 construction workers at his new job have a pierced ear, but don’t wear the earring at work “to keep the hassle to a minimum.” Is he bothered by feeling a need to remove the earring for work? “I feel like I’m two-faced in a way, like I’m selling out,” he admits. “But I’m married and have a baby and feel there are other things more important than making a personal point.”

When Poe, 51, first wore his earring to work 15 years ago, he pulled it out after three months of minor heckling.

“I was reluctant to interact with the corporate community and appear too different from them. I didn’t have the courage to not worry about that. But now I’m not too bothered by what people think.”

Since putting the earring back in, he found there’s a lot more tolerance.

“The climate very definitely has changed,” he said. “People are much more open to differences in appearances and life styles.”

Quizzical glances often stem from a popular belief that the choice of ear makes a statement about one’s sexual preference.

It was thought that an earring worn on the left side usually meant one was heterosexual, an earring worn on the right side indicated one might be homosexual. But despite what some people may think, all those interviewed adamantly said wearing an earring has no sexual connotations anymore.

The choice of ear “doesn’t mean anything anymore,” said Mark Karayanis, testing educator at Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center. He added that many gays disregard those unwritten rules and pierce whichever ear they feel like.

Athletes, Actors

Musicians aren’t the only earring wearers in the public spotlight. Consider 1987 Wimbledon winner Pat Cash, tennis pro John McEnroe, actor Jimmy Smits (“L.A. Law”), Redd Foxx and all-round entertainer Gregory Hines.

Lou Gossett Jr. wore a diamond earring when he accepted his 1982 Academy Award for “An Officer and a Gentleman.” The MTV screen is noticeably studded with earringed men, such as David Bowie and Motley Crue members. And don’t forget Ringo Starr.

Seattle Seahawks linebacker Brian Bosworth wears two earrings. Who’s going to argue with that?

Randy David, 24, a maintenance man for a plumbing company, wears two silver hoops in his left ear. “My boss once asked me to take out the earring for a job on Wilshire, but I didn’t,” the Sylmar resident said. A member of a semiprofessional hard-rock band at nights, David said: “It used to be blood and guts to wear one--can you put up with the torture from family and friends? But now it’s so common, people hardly say anything.”

There seems to be a certain kind of woman who tends to like earrings on a man.

“While ‘earthy’ may not be the best way of describing them, they are more real as opposed to princess types.” Ross said.

His ‘n’ Hers Set

Yet, they also agreed, some women tend not to date men who wear earrings. “I’m not interested in dating women with that kind of a mind-set,” said Poe, whose girlfriend sometimes buys a pair of earrings and wears one while he wears the other.

Some men wear three, four or more on one ear, creating a charm-bracelet effect.

Yuval Bitton, 16, a visiting Israeli high school student, was spotted along Melrose Avenue wearing nine geometrically looping earrings, with three holes in his right ear and six in his left.

Model, dancer and fashion-design student Clarence Ross, 27, wears five earrings in his left ear and one in his right “for style,” he said.

Nonetheless, most earringed men have just one ear pierced, and there may come a time when earrings on a man will be as common as wearing a tie.

“One day we got to fill someone’s shoes that’s in charge,” Price said. “And then we can put our earrings in, because there won’t be anyone to tell us not to. By then, no one will care one way or another.”