Jim Ward (body piercer)

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Jim Ward is an American body piercer.

Ward was born in 1941 in Western Oklahoma and moved to Colorado when he was eleven.^[1] In 1967, New York jewelry maker he joined the New York Motorbike Club, a gay S&M group, and experimented with nipple piercing. Ward then moved to Colorado, where he and other members of the gay Rocky Mountaineer Motorcycle Club experimented more broadly, with genital piercing in particular. In 1973, Ward moved to West Hollywood (a gay village of Los Angeles) where he met Doug Malloy and Fakir Musafar. Together these men developed the basic techniques and equipment of modern body piercing. Malloy introduced the use of the autoclave and hypodermic needle; Ward developed the fixed bead ring and internally threaded barbells. With funding from Malloy (derived from his work with the Muzak corporation), Ward began using his home as a private piercing studio in 1975. Dubbing his studio the Gauntlet, he drew an initial clientèle by running classified ads in local gay and fetish publications. After three years of continued refinement with techniques and equipment, Ward opened the Gauntlet as a commercial storefront operation in West Hollywood on November 17th, 1978. The establishment of this business — considered the first of its type in the United States^[2] — was the beginning of the body piercing industry. ^[3] ^[2]^[4]

In 1977, Ward started the piercing magazine Piercing Fans International Quarterly (PFIQ).^[5]

In a 2004 documentary entitled The Social History of Piercing, MTV called him "the granddaddy of the modern body piercing movement."^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

^ Ward, Jim (2004-10-24). Who Is Jim Ward?. Running the Gauntlet. BME. Retrieved on 2007-11-25.
^ ^a ^b Voss, Brandon (2007-10-09), “Father Knows Best”, The Advocate, <http://www.advocate.com/issue_story_ektid49068.asp>. Retrieved on 25 November 2007
^ "Running the Gauntlet", cited in "In the Flesh: Body Piercing as a Form of Commodity-Based Identity and Ritual Rite of Passage," honors thesis by Amelia Guimarin, under the direction of Prof. Teresa Caldiera, Anthropology, UC Irvine, 2005
^ Ferguson, Henry (January 2000). Body piercing. Student BMJ. Retrieved on 2007-11-25.
^ Ward, Jim (2004-10-24). The World’s First Piercing Magazine. Running the Gauntlet. BME. Retrieved on 2007-11-25.