Quirky Earrings as Spiritual Practice: On Self-Expression During and After Religious Trauma
Earrings as resistance...
One of my longest-running special interests? Quirky, creative, unusual, gigantic earrings—either making them myself or procuring them at art fairs, on Etsy, or even at Hot Topic or Spencer’s.
From the time I got my ears pierced, I, in many ways, was an unknowing earring pansexual…long before that was a TikTok term and long before I acknowledged my own queerness.
And I have receipts from the purity culture days. See the below photos.
And complex emotions aside, I love the girl in these pictures. She was young and expressing herself in the only way she was able to within purity culture. Her body was supposedly evil, so she expressed her quirky, queer (and, yes, nuerodivergent) self through the one of the only fashion-adjacent art forms available. She infused everything with intention, including her earrings. She was doing fashion magick long before she knew what that was. She was expressing the belovedness she felt from the divine1.
Her resistance through creative expression was spiritual2 practice for her…and made me who I am today—someone who still seeks to put intention into even the smallest pieces of my everyday life.
And if I could go back to younger me, I’d give her a hug and say, “Your intuition is right. Keep being wacky, whimsical, and wild you. It’s enough. And your earrings? They are a prayer, a spell, for liberation.”
And I want to know, dear readers: if you’ve experienced a high-control environment (religious or otherwise), in what ways did you express yourself during that time? And in what ways have you carried those joy-as-resistance-interests with you into the present? Let me know in the comments.
And remember: you are magical just by being you.
In Wonder,
Kandi Zeller (she/her)
My understanding of how God expresses Godself is expansive. Basically, I conceive of spirituality as our experience with divine love and connection. But even that feels a little religious-y. Put another way, I believe spirituality is the place where we as individuals and communities connect with the “force of love that holds up the universe” (in words sometimes attributed to Julian of Norwich), whether we conceive of that love as divine or as the love shared between fellow humans/other creatures or some combination of both loves. It is the place within our bodies and our communities where we find love and connection with all who have come before and who will come after.
When I describe or experience any tool/practices as spiritual, I want to acknowledge that that is not everyone’s experience. Any practice/tool I share is meant for all, regardless of spiritual label (or lack of label) or whether you experience these tools as spiritual or as some other adjective(s). Labels, while helpful in describing our experiences, are ultimately insufficient, so I want to hold space for that tension here.
I LOVE THIS SO FREAKING MUCH 😍😍😍😍😍
I don't think most people realize it, but *almost* every time I preach, I'm wearing something that (for me at least) symbolizes the theme of what I'll be talking about. And I like interesting, meaningful (especially handmade) jewelry. I have a guitar-pick barrette I made for myself, and once in my 20's I made some very dangly earrings out of puzzle pieces. Some guy at my then church said scornfully, "Did you *make* those?" and I was like, YEP.