Youth Speech and Body Piercings

From the Schendo's Classics file, I bring you this selection from an actual assignment turned in for my Historical Linguistics class back while getting my MA.  In fact, that professor is indirectly responsible for the whole existence of Schendo's Bad Grammar, but please don't hold it against him.

So, I'm sitting across the bus from a young woman with a very unattractive nose stud.  Not that I have anything against facial piercings and she was cute enough, don't get me wrong- but it just didn't seem right.  Maybe it was her handbag with the bright pink hearts or the ugly boots, but it looked like the closest she'd ever been to a mosh pit was an American Eagle Outlet the day after Thanksgiving.

As a matter of fact, I pondered as the A-Bus lumbered around the corner, why does she have a facial piercing at all?  I'm not that old, but I can remember the piercing craze of the early to mid 90's. I can remember the moralistic outrage of more respectable members of society, who weren't having any of this new craze.  I can also remember everyone I knew getting their tongues pierced as soon as they turned eighteen.

Which brings me to the point (if belatedly): why have diamond nose studs made their way into the mainstream, but tongue rings disappeared like grunge music and flying toaster screen savers?

The question seems to be one of innovation and propagation of cultural practices. It seems to me that if we could understand why today a twenty year old sorority pledge thinks nothing of shoving a diamond studded piece of metal through her nasal folds, but my dread locked, tattooed friend needs to remove her tongue ring when she goes to work- we could apply such knowledge to why certain features of youth-speech survive and propagate, whereas others go the way of 'tubular', 'groovy' and 'righteous.'

(For the record, I would like to say that I have always placed the anatomical integrity of my speech organs above fashion, but that's just one linguist's opinion.)