A Spencer’s customer shared a PSA after buying a nose ring that she says destroyed the inside of her nose.
Katie (@katierosee_) has reached over 5.4 million views and 716,000 likes on her TikTok as of this writing. She captioned her video, “@Spencers you owe me $20.”
To begin her video, Katie added an on-screen caption that reads, “DON’T BUY STAR JEWELRY FOR YOUR NOSE.”
She says, “If you’re like me and you have a nose piercing, and you like to kind of like, accessorize your nose piercing, make it kind of fun,” do not buy the star-shaped nose hoops from Spencer’s.
Katie says she had put a pink star hoop in her nose for a party that she needed to dress up for. She says she noticed the hoop was starting to irritate her nose, but a few of her other piercings were sore as well, so she assumed she may have been sleeping on the side of her body with the piercings too often.
“So I started sleeping on my left side, right?” she says. “That wasn’t the problem.”
Next, Katie says she “shot awake at 8am” the next morning, and her nose was swollen two times bigger than normal. “My nose was bleeding, and it was also like puss was like coming out,” she adds.
She says her first plan was to try and take the hoop out herself. “I try for an hour,” she states, “not budging.” Katie says she used two forks to try and pry the nose hoop open and remove it, but nothing would work.
After having to go to work with the irritated piercing, Katie says she called a piercing shop to ask if they would be able to remove it for her. She says that when she lay down on the studio chair, the piercer immediately told her, “This shouldn’t be in your nose.”
Katie says she told the piercer, “I got them at Spencer’s. They’re advertised as nose hoops. What do you mean they’re not supposed to be in my nose?”
“Oh girl, this should not be in your nose,” she says the piercer responded. “It should not be advertised like this.”
Katie tells viewers that she now has two keloids on the inside of her nose and one on the outside.
According to Urban Body Jewelry, keloids are “a build up of scar tissue” around the piercing site, usually the entrance or exit, and look like small bumps. The site adds that while “Keloids can occur with any kind of piercing,” they are more common in certain types, including nostril piercings.
“The inside of my piercing is torn up,” Katie says. “Like, damaged, just because the shape of this f*cking star.”
Next, she says the piercer had to use pliers to remove the hoop. She says the piercer cut the hoop in half, causing the bottom half to fall out, but the top half would still not budge.
“She had to yank on my nose to get it out,” Katie states. She says when the hoop finally came out, her nose immediately started to bleed and swell up.
Out of all the piercings Katie has, she says that this is the first time she has grown keloids. “I’ve changed my nose piercing multiple times to multiple different things … never had a keloid, never. Nothing like this.”
She says that before leaving, the piercer reminded her never to put a star hoop in her nose again, and Katie tells viewers, “Don’t do it.”
“Now I have to do treatment and stuff for these keloids to go away,” she continues. “My nose is damaged because of these, and they’re advertised as a nose hoop.”
Before ending her video, Katie adds that the piercer told her she was lucky she came to the shop when she did, or the hoop could have done permanent damage to her nose.
@hollyciampaglio @Amazon ♬ original sound – Holly Ann
What went wrong?
While it’s unclear what exactly caused the jewelry to irritate Katie’s piercing, she suggests the issue was its star shape. A Reddit user stated on a piercing thread that star-shaped jewelry is “very likely to irritate your piercing,” adding, “All of the edges and angles will not sit correctly in your piercing channel causing uneven pressure which is likely to cause swelling even in a healed piercing.”
A viewer in the comments section of Katie’s video suggested, “Professional body piercer here: it’s the quality of the jewelry.”
Another said, “only use titanium, sterling silver or surgical steel, NOTHING ELSE.”
According to Blomdahl, the recommended metals for nose piercings are “Titanium, Surgical Steel, Platinum and Niobium.” A few metals to avoid are “Sterling Silver, Gold Plated and Iron.”
The site adds, “Low-grade metals like nickel, tin, zinc and brass are not ideal for piercings as they cause allergic reactions and irritation and in severe cases can cause the body to reject the piercing.”
The star hoops that Katie bought from Spencer’s are advertised on the website as “Seamless Hoop Nose Rings.” In the description, the site states that the piercing type is “Nostril,” and the material used is “316L surgical steel.”
It also states, “This is a decorative item and should not be worn to sleep.”
Since the surgical steel used in the Spencer’s star hoop is recommended for nose piercings, the reason for Katie’s keloids could be from sleeping in the jewelry. Urban Body Jewelry states that sleeping on a piercing can cause trauma to the area and could create a keloid.
The Daily Dot reached out to Katie via TikTok comment and direct message and to Spencer’s via email.
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
