I'm all for good solid airport security as a means to keep our nation safe, but this just goes way too far. Can someone explain to me why I have personally talked to people who were able to board planes with small pocketknives and lighters, but this woman is forced to remove her nipple rings? Mandi Hamlin was going through airport security, when a handheld metal detector started beeping in front of her chest. Mandi explained to security agents that she had both her nipples pierced, but they refused to let her board the flight. She got so desperate that she actually offered to show her nipple rings to a female agent, but they still refused. Mandi was not allowed to board the flight until she went behind a curtain to remove her nipple rings.


Crying, she removed the first one, a barbell, but had a difficult time with the second one, a ring. She told the agents. Their solution? They gave her a pair of pliers to pull out her nipple ring. Ouch. To top off Mandi's wonderful day: while taking out her nipple rings, she overheard security agents snickering about what happened to her. Mandi has now hired prominent feminist lawyer Gloria Allred, who is representing Mandi in her attempts to receive an apology from the security agents and to have their civil rights office perform an investigation. The agency maintains that they performed the security check properly, but I don't know how that's possible when there were so many other options they could have explored before choosing so quickly to humiliate this woman. See the video below for more information, as well as Mandi performing a demonstration on a dummy of how she had to remove her piercings.