I Tried “Rearscaping”: See Photos

I’m not going to lie to you — I don’t love getting new piercings. Some people, like my best friend, Kasey, are absolutely obsessed with them (so much so that she might have recently asked me to pierce her ears with a gun she bought on Amazon), but I’m much more of a tattoo-lover. In my humble opinion, tattoos don’t hurt as much, the healing process is faster, and you can actually sleep on whatever part of your body you get your new ink on. On the flip side, they’re expensive, and, of course, they’re permanent.

My aversion to new piercings is kind of a new thing because I used to absolutely love them when I was younger. However, the fact that they hurt and because the healing process takes for-freaking-ever, I ended up with five piercings on my right ear and only two on my left. This left my ears pretty uneven, so I recently decided it was time for me to alleviate the problem. Luckily, I could try out a brand-spanking-new piercing trend at the same time: rearscaping.

Although the term initially had me envisioning hair removal from my nether regions, I actually learned it’s a simple, cool new piercing trend that involves back-of-ear styling for piercings.

Keep scrolling to learn more about the trend and find out how it worked for me.

What Is Rearscaping?

Since rearscaping is essentially just back-of-ear styling, it basically consists of fun jewelry that you can show off from the front and the back. Studs, a piercing service with locations across the United States, actually created special earring backs that aren’t the traditional flat back or butterfly shape. Instead, the post backs come in cool shapes, like hearts, or even flashy jewelry, such as faux diamonds.

My Rearscaping Experience

To try out rearscaping for myself, I visited the Studs at Century City Mall in Los Angeles. When I got to the store, I met with a piercer named Darin and explained to him what I was looking to do. I wanted to add two more piercings to my left ear, but I also wanted to swap out one of my older piercings for a fun piece of jewelry so my earscape would look cool from all angles.

We landed on doing two different 14k gold pieces close together on my earlobe, but instead of the typically round flat back, I opted for two hearts — which meant that anyone seeing my piercing from the back would see two cute hearts nestled together. Additionally, we swapped out one of my hoops for a fun huggie-style ring that had faux diamonds on both sides.

Darin brought me into a room where he explained the process to me, we dotted the area I wanted pierced, and then he poked me with a needle, inserted my jewelry, and bam — we were finished.

The entire process, including me asking Darin to redraw the dots on my ears and reposition where I wanted my piercings roughly 10 times, took only about 20 minutes total. They even had a hair tie I could use to keep my hair out of the way, as well as a stress ball I could squeeze during the appointment.

Immediately after, I was given instructions on how to care for my piercing and a container of saline spray, and I was sent on my way. My ear looked pretty bruised right after, and it’s still a little swollen, but overall, it looks pretty cute. I love that the back looks just as fun as the front (although maybe a little worse for wear right now, considering the piercings are brand new), and I can’t wait to see what it all looks like when everything is completely healed.

If you’re looking to try out rearscaping for yourself, you can shop Studs’s huggie flatback collection online — the Flatback Huggie Mix N Match Set ($128) is my personal favorite — or you can go in for a styling appointment. Now that I think about it, I think I might have to go back and do some rearscaping on my right side, as well.

Renee Rodriguez (she/her) is a staff writer and social producer for PS. She writes across all verticals, but her main areas of expertise focus on fashion and beauty content with an emphasis on reviews and editor experiments. She also produces social content for the PS TikTok and Instagram accounts.