Frankly, I’m surprised this type of story hasn’t made headlines before. If you missed the news today then you probably haven’t heard about the Texas woman who is demanding an apology from airport security agents because they forced her to remove her nipple ring before she boarded her flight.
“I wouldn’t wish this experience upon anyone,” Mandi Hamlin said at a news conference today. “My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated this way.”
Hamlin told reporters she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas last month when she was randomly picked by a Transportation Security Administration agent to be scanned with a handheld detector. (Mind you she had already passed through the standard metal detector with no problem.) According to the 37-year-old Dallas resident, the female TSA agent got agitated when the screening wand she was using beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin’s chest.
Hamlin says when she told security personnel that she was wearing nipple piercings she was informed that she would have to remove them prior to boarding the plane. However, Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked if she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But, according to Hamlin, several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the piercings were removed.
That’s when Hamlin says things got ugly. According to Hamlin, she managed to remove one bar-shaped nipple piercing but had trouble taking out her nipple ring. TSA agents reportedly provided Hamlin with a pair of pliers, which she used to unhook and remove the ring. Hamlin claims she was in tears throughout the entire ordeal and heard male TSA agents snickering as she took out her piercing.
Long story short, once Hamlin removed her piercings she was allowed to continue to her gate.
But the story doesn’t end there. Enter Gloria Allred, the famed attorney to the stars, who pointed out that Hamlin was allowed to board her flight even though she still was wearing a belly button ring.
As for the trauma surrounding the nipple rings, Allred told reporters: “After nipple rings are inserted, the skin can often heal around the piercing, and the rings can be extremely difficult and painful to remove.”
In any event, Allred says her client was publicly humiliated and has “undergone an enormous amount of physical pain to have the nipple rings reinserted” because of scar tissue and wants an apology from the TSA and an investigation by the agency’s civil rights office.
“The conduct of TSA was cruel and unnecessary,” Allred said. “The last time that I checked a nipple was not a dangerous weapon.”
By the way, in case you are heavily pierced and are planning to fly somewhere in the near future you might be interested in knowing that according to the TSA’s website, “passengers may be additionally screened because of hidden items such as body piercings.” The site goes on to say, “If you are selected for additional screening, you may ask to remove your body piercing in private as an alternative to a pat-down search.”
What do you make of the piercing brouhaha? Do you think TSA agents overstepped their bounds?
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