I had my ears gauged to a 6g plug, and upon stretching to a 2g, my earlobe abscessed so I unfortunately had to take my plug out for them to heal properly. Ever since then, the scar tissue made it virtually impossible to re stretch my ears so I gave up. 4 years later my earlobes are back to a normal sized hole and since i missed my plugs, I decided to give these fake ones a try. And holy **** I love them. They actually look just like real plugs, (most fake ones look FAKE) these made me feel like myself again as crazy as that sounds. I will deffinalty be purchasing more and would recommend them to anyone else who like the plugged ear look but either cant, or doesn't want to taper them