To an excerpt!
Mutilation. It’s all the rage — for middle-schoolers. Six girls, some in braces, lined up in front of a storefront on St. Marks Place after school this week. At least it looked like St. Marks Place. For this once-grungy stretch of the East Village, where a 7-Eleven recently joined the hodgepodge of bong-selling head shops, has turned into the mecca for a special form of self-expression: St. Marks is the body-piercing capital of North America.
She learns that there aren't any statewide regulations in place related to age minimums for body piercing. Anyway, all this can be dangerous for the teens, she writes — "potentially permanent damage." Not to mention infections. "Until adults act, we’re bound to see mutilated preschoolers," she concludes.
