Point 89: How to Hand Wash
Posts tagged The Point
Point 89: Facemask Best Practices
Point 89: Creating an Inclusive Studio Environment
Vicky Ticky Williams
APP Member, Owner Elemental Body Adornment Victoria, BC Canada
Creating a space that is welcoming is extremely important, and, thankfully, not difficult. There are many simple ways you can make your space more accessible to the many clients that would otherwise feel out of place—even if only slightly—in your studio space.
In the case of making your studio more inviting to the LGBTQIA+ community, I would suggest having an area on your waiver where clients can indicate their pronouns. This is a great way to be visibly inclusive. Our waivers have an area clients can circle “he/him”, “she/her”, “they/ them” or they can fill in the blank space offered for other pronouns; for example, “zie/hir”, “xe/xem”, and many more! This helps normalise the process of asking for pronouns and educates the masses that there are more than two options available as a young non-binary person it would have been huge for me to see this!
I recommend avoiding the term “preferred pronouns” as it can delegitimize a person’s gender identity and pronouns to being a preference rather than wholly authentic.
Having a line for the “name you go by” helps to make sure that clients are referred to correctly, for those that have legal dead names (names they no longer associate with) or those that go by nicknames.
Another simple way to help clients feel seen is by having trans and pride flags or stickers proudly displayed. This helps show you are supportive year-round, not only during Pride months!
Point 89: Covid & APP Events
APP CONFERENCE 2020 COVID-19 UPDATE
APRIL 30, 2020, 2:00PM PDT
25TH ANNUAL APP CONFERENCE (ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED JULY 5-10, 2020)
After a long and complicated process the APP has finally come to an agreement whereby we will not be penalized the $200,000+ for cancelling the 2020 Conference.
We have felt strongly that cancelling this year’s conference is the very best action for our association, our attendees, and for the industry, worldwide. Piercers, studio owners, jewelry/counter specialists, and manufacturers face numerous challenges from the impact of this health crisis. Not only is this in the interest of health and safety, but this will also allow all of us to focus on business and family at home and to make sure we are opening under safe protocols.
We will miss all of you and the positive energy we all get from our Annual Conference and Exposition. We appreciate that you have remained steadfast in face of uncertainty.
ATTENDEES
- The APP has sent an email to those who have registered for the 2020 Conference. If you need a refund now, or did not receive the email we ask that you complete a very brief form to request a refund (in full or in part).
- If you did not request a refund by May 15th we will roll over your payment to next year. Attendees who rollover their fees will need to register next year but will use a code to apply their credits at the time they register. If you rollover your registration fees, at any time between now and next year, May 1, 2021, you may request a full refund without penalty.
- The annual Conference is the primary source of income for the Association. Should you be financially able to contribute any part of your fees towards this year’s APP operating expenses, we would greatly appreciate it. Please use the same form to designate your contribution amount.
VENDORS
- The APP has sent an email to vendors who have registered for the 2020 Conference. If you need a refund we ask that you respond to the email and request the refund (in full or in part). If you didn’t receive the email, please contact the office at info@safepiercing.org
- If you did not respond to this email by May 15th we will roll over your payment to nextyear. Vendors who rollover their fees will need to register next year but will use a code to apply their credits at the time they register. If you do a rollover, and at any time between now and next year, May 1st of 2021, decide you need a refund, the APP will honor that.
- For those companies who contributed to the Al D. Scholarship fund we ask that if you are able, to leave those funds with the APP. The APP has informed the scholars that their scholarships will rollover to next year. These scholars will fill our slots—if all scholars are able to make it next year—we will not take on additional scholars for 2021.
- The annual Conference is the primary source of income for the association. Should you be financially able to contribute a portion of your fees for this year to the APP, we would greatly appreciate it.
Regardless of your decision know that we are all a part of a really awesome community and we will get through this.
HOTEL ROOM BLOCK
Planet Hollywood will automatically cancel any room reservation booked in the Association’s room block, which will trigger the refund of any deposit/payment. It will usually take 7-10 business days before you see the credit in your account. You will get an email confirmation from Planet Hollywood.
2020 APP MEMBERS’ RETREAT/CAMP APP & IN-PERSON MEETINGS
In addition, we have cancelled the 2020 APP Members’ Retreat / Camp APP and all in-person APP gatherings including board meetings and committee workgroup meetings. For questions regarding Camp cancellation, please contact Marina at mpecorino@safepiercing.org.
Please stay healthy and financially well as the world moves forward through this crisis.
We look forward to seeing you June 6-11, 2021 at Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas for Conference and the APP Members’ Retreat in 2021!
THE NEXT SCHEDULED APP IN-PERSON EVENTS:
2021
- Annual Conference & Exposition
- Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas — June 6 11.
- APP Members’ Retreat
- Atlanta, Georgia — Dates to be determined.
2022
- Annual Conference & Exposition
- Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas — June 12 17.
- APP Members’ Retreat
- Atlanta, Georgia — Dates to be determined.
2023
- Annual Conference & Exposition
- Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas — June 11 16.
- APP Members’ Retreat
- Atlanta, Georgia — Dates to be determined.
Point 89: APP Expanded Educational Resources
An addition to the written Recommended Response & Recovery Interim Protocols1, the Association of Professional Piercers has broadened its library of free resources available to body art practitioners, health inspectors, legislators, and the general public on the topic of body piercing.
A recording of the Reopening: What’s That Going To Look Like?2 webinar with Monica Sabin, Jef Saunders, and John Johnson is available on YouTube.
In collaboration with many experienced APP Conference speakers, the APP is offering a free webinar Online Educational Series open to all skill levels. So far, classes have been offered on a broad array of topics including Utilizing Your Phone, Studio Security during a Pandemic, and specific techniques for several different piercing placements, like tongues and daith.
The APP Procedure Manual (2013 Edition) is now available for free as a digital download; hard copies are still available in the APP Online Store.
An updated version of this document is in the works.
Watch the organization’s social media for upcoming and additional offerings. For all COVID-19 related updates from the Association of Professional Piercers check safepiercing.org/psa_covid-19.php.
1“Recommended Response & Recovery Interim Protocols,” Public Service Announcements: COVID-19, Association of Professional Piercers, accessed April 27, 2020, https://www.safepiercing.org/docs/APP_Recommended_Post-COVID19_Closure_Reopening_interim_protocols.pdf.
2 “Reopening: What’s That Going to Look Like?,” Online Educational Series, Association of Professional Piercers, recorded April 24, 2020,
3 “APP Procedure Manual, 2013 Edition,” Publication/Store, Association of Professional Piercers, accessed April 27, 2020,
Point 89: APP Recommended Response & Recovery Post-Covid
On behalf of the Board of Directors, updated April 25, 2020
The Association of Professional Piercers (APP) is an international health and safety organization. It is a nonprofit voluntary alliance dedicated to the dissemination of information about body piercing. Governed by a voluntary elected Board of Directors, the APP is a united group of piercing professionals that freely shares information to help fellow members, piercers, healthcare professionals, legislators, health inspectors, and the general public get the best and most up-to-date information about body piercing.
For most countries around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the closure of body art facilities (including body piercing, tattooing, and other elective body art procedures). As countries seek to reopen their economies and ease measures like forced business closings and social distancing, the APP has sought to give accurate, appropriate, and achievable guidelines for all body artists to follow to decrease the spread of COVID-19 and lower the impact in their workplace. Recommended Response & Recovery Interim Protocols1.
We continue to recommend that body art professionals follow local, state or provincial, and national guidelines regarding the closure of non-essential business operations and, within these guidelines, make decisions that are best for them and their individual situations. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a terrible impact on all body art businesses and the people who work in them. It has sickened and killed hundreds of thousands worldwide. Through it all, body artists have stuck together, freely shared information, and readied themselves to return to work and serve their clientele. The Association of Professional Piercers would like to thank the body piercing and body art community for their resiliency, professionalism, and commitment to health and safety.
During this pandemic, information continues to evolve very quickly. The authors of this document will make every effort to make regular updates as new and better information becomes available. If you have suggestions for improvements to this document please email the secretary of the APP at secretary@safepiercing.org.
In Health,
Your Board of Directors
1“Recommended Response & Recovery Interim Protocols,” Public Service Announcements: COVID-19, Association of Professional Piercers, accessed April 27, 2020, https://www.safepiercing.org/docs/APP_Recommended_Post-COVID19_Closure_Reopening_interim_protocols.pdf.
Point 89: The President’s Corner
Cody Vaughn
A lot has changed since I initially wrote this article. Originally I had written about how excited we should all be for our upcoming Conference, and how 2020 was going to be a great year for our piercing community. Little did I know…
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive impact on everybody, and our piercing community is no exception. I understand and sympathize that we are all facing incredible challenges, and the closure of our businesses has been a massive blow to us all.
The Board immediately began working on appropriate responses to the pandemic and how it affects our community. We issued our statement early in March recommending we all discontinue piercing services due to the high risk it could present to our staff and clients, prior to most states issuing mandatory closures. It was a necessary recommendation, but the economic impact of closures did make it a tough pill to swallow. Each response we have issued regarding COVID-19 has required multiple updates because of how quickly information has been changing, on a near daily basis.
A big question from our community has been whether or not our Conference would still happen this year. The health and safety of our conference attendees, volunteers, speakers and vendors has been our top priority while looking at Conference. The Board put in a lot of work creating protocols and plans for how a scaled back Conference could look given the current situation, and every avenue was investigated as to how we could safely make it happen. Initially there were no Federal guidelines for us to follow and everybody was in a bit of a holding pattern. Information continues to become available about COVID-19; the White House and CDC have begun making suggestions for each state outlining phases to determine when businesses can safely start to reopen. These developments made it clear to the Board that with the current state of affairs our 2020 Conference should not happen.
Prematurely canceling our Conference wasn’t a simple option. Contract negotiations are a sensitive and complicated process and the fiscal impact we could have created by prematurely canceling would have been a heavy financial burden for our organization; a $200,000+ penalty in addition to losing our biggest source of annual revenue.
On a national level, nobody knew how long these forced closure measures would last. A couple of weeks? A month? Our host hotel was initially only willing to discuss options when we were thirty days out from our Conference. But thanks to our Board Members’ decisiveness, and a lot of scheduled meetings, we successfully came to a favorable negotiation earlier than that with our host hotel, which allowed us to cancel our 2020 Conference AND avoid penalties.
We thank you all for your patience and trust while we’ve worked on this. From the outside I can understand how people would think, “You should just cancel it,” and my goodness how we all had hoped it could have been that quick and simple! As Board Members we have a responsibility to be stewards of the organization, and to look out for its well being. That includes upholding our mission statement of health and safety, and looking out for the financial health of the organization.
I am incredibly proud of all of the tireless work our Board Members, Officers, APP staff and volunteers have been putting in to best address all these issues. Like everybody else, we all have our own family, financial responsibilities, and work/studios to worry about. Even with all that, everybody has truly risen to this challenge and continues to do so.
It isn’t to say we are anywhere close to being out of the woods yet, as there is still a lot of work to be done and planning ahead. How this pandemic will affect our community long-term is not yet known. But I know the APP’s Board, employees, and volunteers will all continue to do the absolute best job we possibly can. I implore all of us in the piercing community to be kind and encouraging to each other in these difficult days ahead. We are a large extended family and now is the time for us to come together and show our support for one another.
I hope all of you reading this stay healthy, stay safe, and hang in there. It will be especially sweet when we are all able to safely meet each other again, and come together with our shared passion for safe piercing.
Point 89: From the Editor
Marina Pecorino, Managing Editor– The Point
The Point started in 1994 as a black and white paper mailer with a rotating cast of producers. The very first iteration1 stated in its introduction that “we intend [for this publication] to serve as a forum for information; all contributions are welcome.” In Issue 22, The Point producers stated that the publication was intended to “make piercing a safe, positive, evolving craft” and cautioned submitting authors to “expect to be variously disagreed with, challenged, or supported by other subscribers. That’s exactly The Point.”
This will be my final issue as a Managing Editor of The Point: Journal of Body Piercing, and the last consolidated issue to be published in a “printable” magazine format. Over the last five years I’ve helped to produce and publish 20 issues containing various tidbits of industry history; I’m sincerely proud of this professional and personal accomplishment. This unexpected opportunity allowed me to know colleagues and our organization in ways I wouldn’t have otherwise experienced. I feel closer and more connected to the piercing community, thanks to the knowledge I have gained as an Editor for this amazing publication. I am eternally grateful to have had this chance, and to have worked so closely with Kendra Jane B. and Jim Ward during my time with this project.
Moving forward, the publication will be exclusively available at thepointjournal.org in a blog style. We continue to encourage and welcome submissions of body modification and piercing related writing and high resolution images to editor@safepiercing.org. Since inception, this publication seeks to provide a reliable and progressive source of industry information, and a public platform for the diverse set of voices in our field.
The overall theme of this issue was originally planned around the interconnection between LGBTQIA+ and body mod culture; I had untold enthusiasm and personal connection to this theme. Unfortunately, due to a lack of author submissions from our community on the topic, and my own mental hurdles about ending this project (I’m not a fan of endings), the publication date was pushed far beyond our normal quarterly schedule.
Ultimately, I made the difficult decision to refocus the enclosed content around the current state of our industries and communities. Alongside many others, recently my attention and energy have been redirected; concentrating on how we can work together to create a community and support others in these uncertain and ever-evolving circumstances. I am proud of the work that my colleagues and organization have accomplished in the face of this crisis; more information about these labors of love can be found on subsequent pages of this issue.
Unfortunately, like many others, I have very different feelings toward the collaboration, guidance, and assistance offered by my state and national governing bodies. This issue offers a selection of perspectives from different industry professionals on the current COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout this difficult experience, I have been feeling much like Leah Sarah Kent describes later in this issue; “defeated, sad, and ultimately helpless” about the “systemic oppression and inequalities this virus so clearly exposes” and the lack of “major collective action as a people to rise up and fight for a new society.”
Personally, I am ready for a social and structural revolution, with the safety, security, and well being of the nation and world as the cornerstone. Until then, I’ll continue doing what I can to use my platforms to share diverse perspectives, reliable information, and available resources with my local and global communities. I hope that you will do the same. As Caitlin McDiarmid has said: “Stay Positive. Stay Generous. Stay Safe.”
1 “The Point—official newsletter of the APP,” File Archive, Association of Professional Piercers, accessed May 20, 2020,
https://www.safepiercing.org/docs/point01.pdf.
2 “The Point—official newsletter of the APP: Volume 1, Issue 2,” File Archive, Association of Professional Piercers, published January 1995,
Point 88: Upcoming Educational Conferences
Outreach Committee
Upcoming Educational Conferences
The 5th Annual APP Members’ Retreat
Portland, Oregon: October 1–5, 2019
With the theme of ALIENS, the five year anniversary of Camp APP will be taking place at Mount Hood in the Pacific Northwest! Spaces are limited so register soon. Learn more about this amazing retreat on Facebook or by using the Member Login at safepiercing.org.
The 4th Annual UKAPP Conference
Manchester, United Kingdom: October 6–8, 2019
Join piercers from the UK and surrounding countries for another astounding educational conference at the Radisson Blu Edwardian Hotel and Convention Center. Find out more information on Facebook or visit ukapp.org.uk.
Point 88: LBP 2019 Review in Photos
Photos by Autumn Swisher
