Apparently, they’re saving us from terrorists with nipple rings:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — A Texas woman who said she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane called Thursday for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation.
“I wouldn’t wish this experience upon anyone,” Mandi Hamlin said at a news conference. “My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated this way.”
Hamlin, 37, said she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on February 24 when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent after passing through a larger metal detector without problems.
The female TSA agent used a handheld detector that beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin’s chest, the Dallas-area resident said.
Hamlin said she told the woman she was wearing nipple piercings. The agent called over her male colleagues, one of whom said she would have to remove the jewelry, Hamlin said.
Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked whether she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewelry was out, she said.
She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring.
“Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her,” said Hamlin’s attorney, Gloria Allred, reading from a letter she sent Thursday to the director of the TSA’s Office of Civil Rights and Liberties. Allred is a Los Angeles lawyer who often represents high-profile claims.
Applying pliers to the torso of a mannequin wearing a bra with the rings on it, Hamlin showed reporters how she took off the second ring.
She said she heard male TSA agents snickering as she took out the ring. She was scanned again and was allowed to board even though she still was wearing a belly button ring.
Don’t you feel safer ?
March 28th, 2008 at 10:08 am
I used to date a girl in Albuquerque who sported a set of big nipple rings and I can attest that they are indeed a hazard. I nearly chipped a tooth on one!
March 28th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Haha, I always figured you have to be pretty crazy to get a nipple piercing. Maybe there is some logic to this.
I keed, I keed.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:42 am
Reveals what the “T” in “TSA” stands for.