one of my characters is from a culture where everyone has certain piercings
(it's triangle hoop earrings and a nose bridge industrial)
i brought this up with one of my friends n she wondered if it would be ok in this culture for people to change the designs of the piercings/take them out
the religion allows them to take the earrings out for stuff that'd be a pain to keep them in for (like swimming, sleeping and bathing) but it currently doesn't have any rules abt changing the shape of them? they were supposed to be triangles so that they'd be distinct and you'd be able to notice a person from this culture just by seeing the piercings.
do you think they should be able to change the shape of them?
Well if you change the recognisable shape of them, what makes them different from normal earrings? Like the Sihk Bangle - it's specifically a simple silver bangle on the right wrist (Apologies if I'm wrong, I'm going of what I learned in class and it's been a long time since then, if anyone knows any better feel free to correct me). It identifies you as a Sihk and symbolises something in the religion. If you just changed it to have any sort of pattern or colour for the sake of fashion, it just becomes a decorative bracelet and looses it's symbolism.
That being said, the context is in your world with your culture. If you think there is good reason why they would and if the rules you have made don't contradict it, then go ahead and change the shapes around, if you're going to though, perhaps have something they're not allowed to change e.g. colour?
The advantage of having their symbol being the shape of a triangle as opposed to something more specific is that, I imagine, it would be easy to customize it while it still remains recognisable. For example, think about a cross, its very simple shape with a huge amount of symbolism, however, if it's as small as charm or as big at a chatehridal, if it's made of metal, wood, or plastic, if it's black, neon green, or polka dotted if it's patterned of textured or covered in dorito dust it is still a cross and still a symbol of the Christian faith merely by being those to intersecting lines. So, I'd say it should be perfectly fine for your people to wear earrings of different sizes, colors, patterns, and materials because as long as it is still a triangle it still symbolizes their religion. Hope that helps
On the other hand, you might choose to have the colour/material as the symbolic thing and the shape could be changed, but I think that it would make a bit less sense because shapes usually have a lot of symbolism attached to them.
