After a year on maternity leave, slumping around in leggings, I was feeling distinctly unglamorous. My clothes didn’t fit but, with the pandemic raging, I had nowhere special to be and couldn’t quite make myself buy any bigger ones. 

However, I did make one style upgrade and it proved to be more of a mood-booster than I could have predicted. Inspired by Instagram images of influencers with pretty jewels snaking up their ears, I decided to get myself a new ‘stacked’ ear wardrobe to distract from my new eyebags. 

Bling instead of Botox, if you will. Two more piercings in my left ear and one in my right won admiration from my five-year-old, as well as a trio of mum friends who signed up for their next piercings, too.

Traditionally, extra holes and inkings were something done – and regretted – by rebellious teenagers, but in recent years, they’ve crept towards the mainstream. Now, the pandemic seems to have pushed the trend fully centre stage.

In 2022 getting a new hole doesn’t need to involve a trip to an intimidating piercing studio, thanks to a glut of luxe piercing bars popping up in department stores and boutiques. 

Upmarket London piercing parlour and jewellery shop Sacred Gold has seen a rise in ‘women over 40 with more refined, luxurious taste’, according to its resident piercer Nicole Mitchell. 

Meanwhile, fashion jeweller Astrid & Miyu reports piercing appointments have increased by 280 per cent since 2019, with notable uptake among older customers. And such is the success of Monica Vinader’s five piercing parlours (decked out with comfy pink chairs and sweets in bowls) that the brand is opening two more in February.

‘Earrings were our fastest-growing category over the last year and it has shown no signs of slowing down, which I think really speaks to the popularity of ear stacking as a new and bold form of self-expression,’ says Vinader, who is herself planning on getting a second piercing on her lobes soon.

While second (and third) lobe piercings are most popular, Astrid & Miyu, which has piercing salons in London and Manchester, says there is a rising interest in older women getting piercings on their helixes (top of ear), conch (midway up) and tragus (the bit of cartilage at the entrance to your ear; apparently the least sensitive to pain).

But in terms of midlife taboo-busting, tattoos take it to the next level. Celebrities from fashion designer Samantha Cameron, 50, to Halle Berry, 55, have them, as well as national treasures Dame Helen Mirren, 76, and Dame Judi Dench (who got her first tattoo aged 81). 

Nicole Mitchell, who is also a tattoo artist, says more women are coming in to discuss ‘delicate and fine-line tattoo styles. They’ve become more mainstream and offer a more accessible version to many people who previously thought tattooing was very “heavy duty”.’

For some, it’s a deeply personal, permanent amulet to carry them through or mark a passage out of challenging times. For others, it’s a symbol of bodily reinvention that doesn’t involve the normal punishing new year diet and fitness regime. But whatever the reason, now more than ever, tattoos or piercings are making an appearance on midlifers’ wish lists.