To Show Independence?

Men

✔ New York Times Service

NEW YORK-Earrings on men?

What was until recently a custom confined mainly to some blacks, frankly homosexual males or members of motorcycle gangs is starting to show up more widely.

"It's the latest way to show your independence,' explained David Holmden Jr., a 25-year-old graduate student in communications at Hunter College.

¿

"IT USED to be only a few men were long-haired; now everybody's longhaired, so earrings are the next step."

Holmden owns 10 different earrings

with pendants, ranging from a wooden button to a multicolored piece of Venetian glass.

He said he changes them daily to suit his mood in the same way he used to change

ties.

THE growth in popularity has created something of a boom among stores.

Sol J. Kahn, the owner of Solmor Jewelry on Lexington Avenue, said he had

Take to Earrings

pierced the ears of only 150 men in 1970, but 500 men so far this year. Kahn, who charges nothing for piercing, said he has worked on "everybody from Vietnam vets to ballet dancers."

Kahn said that men usually prefer a gold post at $15 a pair, but one customer bought a set with small diamonds for $200.

At the pleasure chest on Seventh Avenue gold rings for men in diameters from 14 to 34 of an inch at $5 a set are popular.

THE SHOPS also sell a single gold pirate loop for $3.50, but at both stores men generally must buy a matched set. The owners will not separate their stock, which comes from suppliers of women's costume jewelry..

However, since men customarily wear a single earring and prefer different styling, some craftsmen are becoming specialists in the

field.

Mack Gordon-Bellamy, for example, the owner of Malomac's originals on 'Broadway, designs and

produces ornaments to order for a multiracial male clientele.

most

Gordon-Bellamy's expensive design was a gold setting for a 4-carat diamond that sold for $125. One of his clients, is Eric Rayfield, who wears a boneshaped earring made from ivory in his left ear.

"THE MAN is the peacock or the rooster: he should be beautifully plumed,” insisted Rayfield, who is 21.

Dr. Walter A. Fairservis, chairman of the department of anthropology and sociology at Vassar College and a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History, said earrings are neither inherently masculine nor feminine.

Like hair length or wearing long pants. they are a fashion whose popularity waves and wanes over time," he said. Fairservis pointed out that the custom of men wearing earrings was widespread among such Balkan subcultures as that of the gypsies until the break-up

of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918.

EARRINGS were a common ornament on men in England at least up to the time of the Roundheads, who sent Charles I to the block in the 17th century, with a pearl in his left ear.

The tradition remained alive among navai personnel until it was banned by the British Navy in the mid19th century, and by the United States Navy only 50 years ago.

The naval ban came about partly in response to changing styles and partly for reasons of safety. Even today there are problems, personal and financial, for men who choose to wear earrings.

ARNOLD McCuller, 21, an actor-singer with the Los Angeles company of "Hair," said his gold loop caught in some fishnet scenery once, temporarily bringing a musical to a halt.

But most men say they have little trouble.

James H. Kimberly, 65, a member of the family that Owns the Kimberly-Clark Paper company (Kleenex, etc.) has worn a gold loop as a good luck charm since 1950.

WHILE most men prefer to wear an earring in their left ear, he wears it on the opposite side (“only peasants wear it on the left ear").

Kimberly, who is the father of three daughters, said that if he had a son, He wouldn't mind him wearing an earring. "I would draw the line at a nose ring though," he said. "That's ridiculous."

Women Nix Graduating Into Marriage

L.A. Times/Washington Post Service

SOUTH BEND, Ind. Unlike their elder sisters, women entering college no longer expect to graduate into marriage, a recent survey at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Ind., confirms.

Freshmen at Saint Mary's. one of the nation's oldest women's colleges, think the ideal age for a woman to marry is now 25 or 26, with a sizeable minority opting for marriages deferred up till the age of 30. Less than a quarter of those surveyed thought women should marry before the age of 24.

Men are considered ideally marriageable between 25 and 30 by most respondents. with fewer than 30% expressing a willingness to consider men under 25.

Despite expectations of later marriage. the average girl surveyed expressed a preference for a largerthan-average family of three or four children.

In terms of life-style, getting away from problemridden American cities ranks as a popular ambition with young women, according to the survey.

More than half the Saint Mary's freshmen expressed the desire to live in a rural area, rather than a city or suburb. and nearly onethird expressed the desire to spend sometime living outside the United States.

!