Keep Your Nipples Where I Can See 'Em!

Did you hear about the Lubbock, TX woman whose nipple rings set off security in the Lubbock Airport? They made her take the rings out before they’d let her board the flight. Unfortunately, one of the rings had been in so long, the tissue had semi-attached itself and she had to use pliers to remove it. Ay-yi-yi. That makes me say “ouch” and rub my nipples just thinking about it. And I’m not even pierced. (Then again, any excuse to rub my nipples and say “ouch,” right?)

I don’t know for sure, but body-piercing doesn’t really seem like much of a terrorist marker to me (and given that the current crop of terrorists are predominantly Islamic—Bush and Cheney being the obvious exceptions—it seems even more unlikely. I’m guessing Islam frowns on body piercing.) But this is Lubbock, after all.

For the uninitiated, Lubbock is basically a flat desert/high plains kinda place in the Texas Panhandle. They have a decent University there . . . and not much else. It’s your basic West Texas ranching/oil town. They call themselves Flatlanders. Need I say more?

But I digress.

So Mandi Hamlin (I thought for sure she was a stripper, given the rings and the name, until I saw the photo. Then again, it’s Lubbock . . . goats look mighty pretty in the right shade of lipstick.) So Mandi Hamlin manages to pass through the big detector with no problems. But she was unlucky enough to be selected for secondary screening. Maybe because she looks like a rancher in drag.

Anyhoo, when the waiter/actor/feed store clerk/TSA agent waved the little wand in front of her boobies, it apparently whooped like a cowgirl at a barrel race. Ms. Hamlin (sorry, I can’t do the “mandi with an i” thing solo) informed the nice lady in sensible shoes that her nipples were pierced, and that was what was setting off the alarm.

Well, you would have thought she was a Fembot the way these people reacted. And after subjecting her to the painful, embarrassing and completely needless exercise, they never even mentioned her pierced belly button.

I’m sure Ms. Hamlin will get the last laugh, though. She’s hired Gloria Allred to represent her and GA has already staged a re-enactment, using a pierced bra contraption, and asking Mandi with an “I” to show the press corps exactly what she went through.

Why, America, are we so scared of the nipple?