Monroe piercings, medusa piercings or madonna piercings are the types of lip piercing. A left piercing is a monroe and a right is a madonna. Medusa piercings go through the center of the upper lip (directly under the nose). As usual, labrets of 1.6 mm gauge and 6-10 mm long are used for these types of piercing. For faster healing you should choose the labret with the length 2-3 mm more then the thickness of your lip.
However, some nonstandard types of lip piercing exist: vertical piercing of lower or upper lip and lip piercings on opposite sides of the mouth. For such operations you should better choose the rings of 10mm or 12 mm in diameter, or bananabells of 1.6x10 mm or 1.6x12 mm with the equal beads.
Worthy of particular mention are so-called smile piercing, when your piercing can be visible only in case you smile. This is a body piercing through the frenulum of either the upper or lower lip. For this type of piercing small jewelry 1.2x8 mm or 1.2x10 mm. Rings, mocrobarbells and microbananabells are appropriate. It is important for the jewelry not to bother you and not to hit on your teeth.
You should choose the length of the jewelry very carefully. If the length of the jewelry is not sufficient then it may lead to “skinning over” and “caving” of the jewelry, especially the heads of the labrets. Very often the clients want small, imperceptible jewelry in their lip and buy short labrets with small heads and beads. In healing process the lip tries to push out the jewelry or skin the jewelry over. In case of skinning over (caving, that is visible in the mornings – author’s note) it is necessary to replace the jewelry by longer one or by one with larger head.
The piercing procedure is standard and doesn’t need anesthesia, curved piercing is difficult to do due to the marks and the whole procedure passes faster and less painfully than tongue piercing. But it is recommended for piercer to make sure that there are no veins in the place of piercing by holding the pierced part of the lip up to the light.
Vertical labret is vertical lip piercing. This type of piercing is very original. The piercing looks the most aesthetically, if it goes through the center of the lip, perpendicularly to the lip, when the needle enters between the lower lip and the teeth and exits through the center of the lip on top. For such piercing microbananabells of different sizes are appropriate, dependant of lip thickness.
Horizontal labret is recommended for thrill-seekers. This type of piercing is much more complicated. The piercing goes parallel to the lip. If the needle goes insufficiently deep, then the jewelry may be sloughed off.
Besides, such piercing has longer healing period than, for example, common medusa. The piercing is constantly in the open air and by definition a man can't help licking off the lips. So with the saliva bacteria get into the piercing very well. Thus, for fast and competent healing of horizontal labret it is necessary to make a lot of efforts and practice maximum hygiene of lips.
If one doesn’t like symmetry and harmony, then he may experiment: to pierce obliquely, bias or not in the center. One can argue about aesthetic appearance of such piercing, but should he? All that we do, we do for ourselves, especially concerning our own body. And we only have a right to decide what type of piercing we want to have.
Lip piercing aftercare is the same as for < a href=http://piercingdot.com/category_tongue-piercing-c170/ tongue piercing: to rinse with the antiseptic three to four times daily and soak the outside of the piercing using topical anticeptic, and don’t play with the jewelry until full healing (one week to 20 days).