Vision Loss

Remember back when lip rings, tongue piercings, and navel jewelry were considered strange? Well, now people have taken extreme body modification to an entirely new level. Forget the JewelEye. The last place on the body you would have ever thought could be tattooed has gotten inked.

I guess humans can make anything possible, even getting tattoos on the eyes. And I’m not talking about eyelid tattooing either, but actual tattoos on the eyeballs.

Apparently, cosmetic corneal tattooing has been used since the late 19th century to mask scars and other defects. But somehow the medical procedure has become an elective one, and has migrated from the cornea to the sclera (the white part of the eye).

Some ink addicts are eyeing it as a potential new trend, despite major risks for infection, loss of sight, loss of eyeballs, etc. In fact, three very brave (and maybe soon to be blind) “mice” decided to test it out. Pauly Unstoppable, Shannon Larratt, and Josh decided to willingly get stabbed in their eyes multiple times in an attempt to turn their whites an electric blue.

The result— major bruising and discomfort, and some blisters between the sclera and conjunctiva. But hey, at least they accomplished their goal…

If this actually sounds appealing to you, just remember that trends come and go; so it would be wise to “think before eye ink.”

Not to mention that 17 percent of an estimated 45 million Americans who got inked in normal places (a.k.a. “their skin”) now have tattoo remorse, according to a 2004 Harris Poll. Many of them opt for expensive, painful, and time consuming tattoo removal. But eyeball tats will pretty much leave you marked for life.

Which leaves me wondering— what will these blue-eyed idiots do when they start regretting their moronic experiment?

The lights are low, the music smoky; you catch her piercing gaze from across the bar. As she saunters over, eyes locked to yours, you wrack you brain for the perfect opening line. But before you can find the right words, an odd metallic gleam catches your attention.

“Is there…something in your eye?”
“Oh, it’s my JewelEye,” she croons, blinking a few times for emphasis.
Thinking she may have had a few too many stiff ones, you ask her to repeat.
“Jewel-Eye,” she giggles. “It’s Dutch.”

This does little to explain what looks like a piece of heart-shaped shrapnel lodged in her ocular conjunctiva. But you buy her a drink, all the while wondering what those crazy Europeans will think of next.

Welcome to the future of body modification, where tattoos, septum rings, and 3-inch plugs are no longer enough to stand out in a crowd. Yes, in the true spirit of innovation, today’s young and restless have found an even more cringe-inducing way to shock the parents. The JewelEye, a small platinum implant that is placed under a thin membrane in the white of the eye, was developed by a surgeon at the Netherlands Institute for Innovative Ocular Surgery (NIIOS) back in 2002. Never to be outdone by their Continental counterparts, Los Angeles residents soon flocked to a local ophthalmologist who offered extraocular implants, Dr. Robert Maloney. While other ophthalmologists have dismissed the procedure as dangerous and unnecessarily invasive, Maloney maintains that the JewelEye is not only safe, but also “really exciting and interesting and beautiful and a little bit edgy.”

But if Maloney’s bubbling recommendation hasn’t sold you, you may be swayed the NIIOS website. “It is of all times for people to wear jewelry,” it cryptically insists, making you wonder if the JewelEye isn’t, in fact, the mod of the new Millennium.

But whether the fad will stick or fade like so much Crystal Pepsi has yet to be seen. And in the meantime, you may want to stick to something tried and true, like a puncture to the ol’ nasal cartilage. Ah, those were the days…

Parents: after you read the following, pick your jaw off the ground quickly. You don’t want to get it stuck that way, do you? And so goes the logic of this myth…

Kids are easily amused. No, I’m not kidding. There was a time in life when simply trying to focus on a freckle at the end of my nose would keep me entertained for a surprisingly long time – at least until my eyes got tired and my head started to hurt. The unfortunate side of this coin is that adults are easily annoyed – especially by those things that kids tend to find amusing. So, sooner or later, some grown-up person in my family would lose patience and snap, “Stop crossing your eyes like that or they’ll get stuck that way!”

Now among vision myths, this one is higher than most on the absurdity scale. Furthermore, its effect is, as often as not, the opposite of the adult’s intention, which is to convince the kid to stop crossing their eyes. I know more than one person who, as a child, responded to the threat with something along the lines of, “Really? Cool!” before proceeding to actually try to get their eyes stuck out of alignment.

Furthermore, there is a vaguely harmful element to this particular myth. Strabismus, the medical condition that causes the eyes to be out of synch with each other, is not acquired. Children who have it are born with it. However, imagine a child who has been afflicted with this condition constantly being told by other children, “Gee, you shouldn’t have crossed your eyes so much. My mom says that’s how they get stuck that way.”

So if your kid is amused by crossing his eyes on purpose, let him do it. It’ll eventually cause a headache – perhaps for you as well as him – but it won’t do any damage. It’s also better than him embarrassing himself – and you – the next time he meets someone with an actual visual problem.