International Body Piercing Day is originally dedicated to Jim Ward, often heralded as “the granddaddy of the body piercing movement”. Jim Ward has been an incredibly influential part of the new body modification movement, with a specific focus on body piercing. He has been part of the forward driving force for piercings in the western world, and helped to develop the basic techniques for piercing, with a special focus on genital piercings.

He is directly responsible for introducing the incredibly popular barbell piercing style to the US, the internal threading style of them was a vast improvement over existing piercing techniques. This technique he picked up from ‘Tattoo Samy’ from Frankfurt, who had come to visit him a number of times in the US after this.

Almost everything you see today in the western body piercing scene can be traced back to Jim Ward. While certainly not the earliest piercer on record - Jack You nt was piercing 20 years when Jim started Gauntlet - Ward took piercing out of the back room and into the strip mall (metaphorically speaking) with the opening of the first piercing only studio called The Gauntlet in the late 1970's.

Body Piercing Day is a great opportunity to finally take the plunge, and get yourself that piercing you’ve been contemplating. With the ability to choose from the ever growing selection of piercings, from ear piercings, nose piercings, lip, and cheek piercings, you can display your individuality with a piece that’s meaningful to you.

Those are just the ones that are easily visible, when you take into account nipple piercings, the always sexy belly-button piercing, and the incredibly daring variety of genital piercings, there are tons of options for enhancing your life in some rather creative ways.