Captive Bead Rings

The wearing of a captive bead ring does not always dictate the absence of access to status and opportunity. There have been individuals who had both a captive bead ring and recognition for their role in society. Still, the road to a position of prominence becomes straighter and contains fewer obstacles, if the person traveling that road demonstrates an awareness of what matters in today’s world. Obviously, the possession of a pierced body part does not testify to someone’s computer literacy or to someone’s skill at communicating with others. The following article was written with those facts foremost in the mind of the writer.

The captive bead ring comes in a wide range of sizes. Sometimes a muscular motorcyclist will decide to have a second ear piercing. That will require the use of a large captive bead ring—one sized to fit the man’s large ear lobe.

More frequently, a young mother might want her infant daughter to have pierced ears. In that case the captive bead ring must be very tiny. It often needs to fit in the ear of a three to four month old baby.

A captive bead ring does not always hang from a pierced ear. Such a ring might be found on a pierced eyebrow, a pierced naval or a pierced nipple. The ring keeps the pierced area open. Due to its rounded edges, the ring has become one of the most common ornaments worn within recently-pierced body parts.

The bead or ball on the ball closure ring does not rely on any clamping device or adhesive element for its ability to remain fixed in place. The ring testifies to the existence of a seldom-noticed physical principal.  The tensile or compressive strength of the ring metal holds the ball in place.

The ball is just a shade larger than the space it fills within the closure ring. Two indentations on the ball help the ring to hold the ball “captive.” That explains the term captive bead ring or captive ball ring.

Both the ring and ball can vary in more than just size. They both have been fashioned from a number of different metals. Surgical stainless steel, nubium and titanium all possess the type of tensile strength that’s needed in a captive bead ring.

The reader might note that the above-mentioned metals have been around for only a relatively brief and recent part of human history. Body piercing, however, has been a recognized “art” for many centuries. The reader might well wonder what other metal has the compressive strength that’s needed in a captive ball ring.

The reader that has such a curiosity can appreciate the age old search for a metal with compressive strength. That quest ended with discovery that such strength existed within the world’s most valuable metal. Gold possesses the tensile strength that a metal must have in order to be used in a captive bead ring.

White gold captive bead rings have that same tensile strength. They also have a distinct, eye-catching beauty. In ancient cultures, the wearing of white gold rings was typically viewed as emblematic of status. Even today the wearing of white gold rings suggests access to money and privilege within the small community of captive ring wearers.

The larger communities, the people who shy away from added pierced body parts, tend to obtain money and privilege through education and job success.