Extraordinary search (research, in fact) for Prince Albert, Consort of Queen Victoria, threw up 2 links - before the one to the Prince himself - to 'Prince Albert (PA)' which turns out to be a 'popular' type of penis piercing. Clicking on the Wikipedia link - quite by accident, I promise, because I made this search in all innocence (I could have been a child researching a history project, for God's sake!) produced some horribly graphic pictures, showing where the ring was to be positioned in both circumcised and fully capped male members. Have we gone completely mad? Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, for all his probable faults (especially as a parent to his eldest son) deserves far better than a third place listing on Google below some sick popular fetish. When I wrote PINCUSHION, the third in a series of psychological chillers (available in BeWrite Books via Amazon et al), I wanted to question the stupid fashion for body piercing, rationalised, very solemnly, for me by a bestudded and pierced anthropologist with whom I taught 'contextual/cultural' studies some years ago at a second-rate art school recently turned into a 'university college'. (This same college, in Cornwall, was funding the final year of her PhD research into fetish clubs in London, and even paid, through the same round of research funding, for the massive tattoo she had done on her sternum; in fact, she took immense gratification from flashing her cleavage at the Principal, remarking that 'he'd paid for it...) I knew, from her research (and photos from The Torture Garden) that genital piercing was quite a fad (so much for originality and personal autonomy..); but calling these penis rings after 'Prince Albert' is new to me - and quite beyond the pale.
Cripes!
Meanwhile, rockets fall on Gaza, children are murdered by their parents, and 500 plus jobs per day, it seems, are being axed in Britain's economic downturn.
We don't live in a perfect world, I know, but these 'Prince Alberts' make no sense at all, and the fact that they are 'mainstream', it seems, evidenced by top billing on Google, only makes fools of us all.
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