A Fostoria, Ohio mother posted a photo of her infant daughter with a pierced dimple on Facebook, sparking outrage, threats and calls to remove the child from her custody.
The photo shows a beaming baby with a diamond-studded piercing on her left cheek. It was captioned with her mother's unapologetic, although sarcastic, words.
"I think she's gonna love it!!," Enedina Vance wrote on June 28. "I'm the parent, she is MY CHILD, I will do whatever I want! I make all of her decisions until she's 18, I made her, I own her!! I don't need anyone's permission, I think it's better, cuter, & I prefer her to have her dimple pierced."
Vance, a strong advocate against piercing or circumcising children, posted the edited picture to Facebook, where it had more than 13,000 shares.
The post quickly incited outrage among the parenting community, and she was called "a bad mother" and worse. Some called for Child Protective Services, others for forced hysterectomy, and some for her death.
But after realizing that many people weren't quite getting her message, Vance posted on Facebook again, this time pointing out that while people were ready to beat her to death over her excuses for piercing her baby's cheek, those excuses are the same ones used to justify circumcision.
"Why so hypocritical?? How is it so triggering, so enraging to see my baby with a pierced dimple, but actually knowing a baby is being strapped down and forcibly having his most sensitive and innervative portion of his penis amputated seems perfectly OK? How can society threaten death over one, but encourage and support the other? Piercing is bad, but cutting is accepted as the norm?" the 35-year-old wrote. "People would rather continue to inflict an unnecessary and irreversible ritual onto their defenseless infant, than to have to admit that they don't know."