You've no doubt seen older women who spent a lifetime wearing heavy earrings develop vertical slits where the pierced holes are. While their earlobes themselves didn't technically stretch, they look like they did because of how the pierced hole stretched out. You can avoid this fate, for the most part, if you're careful about what earrings you wear and how you wear them. While nothing is ever guaranteed, simply following a few guidelines will help you wear earrings for years that don't sag or pull.
Avoid Heavy Earrings
You'll find a lot of home remedies for ensuring heavy earrings don't droop, but the fact remains that, if those earrings are heavy and drag your earlobe down, the hole in your earlobe is going to stretch over time. It won't happen in one day, but over years of wearing heavy earrings, you'll see those holes turn into vertical slits. This happens mainly with dangling earrings because the weight of the decorative part pulls down on the hook, but heavy stud earrings can contribute to the phenomenon as well. If you have heavy earrings that you love wearing (and doesn't it seem like there are so many?), wear them sparingly, and take them out as soon as you no longer have to have them in.
Watch Out for the Weight Distribution of Dangling Earrings
Sometimes the whole earring isn't that heavy, but it's got enough heft to make your earlobe swing if the earring starts swinging. That, too, can pull down on the earlobe and make it more likely that the hole will stretch over time. If you're going to be relatively active one day, for example, try to wear lighter earrings and save the ones with heft for days when you're mostly sitting and not doing much that could make them move.
Use Support Backings or Stabilizer Backs
For stud earrings that aren't that heavy but that have unequal weight distribution that makes the decorative part droop, get special backings known as stabilizer backings or support backings. These sometimes look like regular backings with an extra metal flap on top, or they can look like a regular round backing with an extra plastic disk. Both of these help keep the front of the earring from drooping by creating a bracing effect when that flap or disk sits next to the back of your earlobe. Even if the stud isn't that heavy, the drooping can create downward pressure on the pierced hole.
So you see, it's not that an earring is so heavy that it damages your earlobe immediately; it's that the earring can pull just enough so that over time, your skin stretches, and that pierced hole stretches out. But by supporting the earrings you wear and being careful about how much weight you have pulling your earlobes around, you increase the chances that your pierced earlobes will continue to be healthy and avoid stretching.
