Ear Pointing is more common than you might think. After a simple ear piercing it’s possibly the most common ear modification that you’ll see. Certainly it’s much more common than procedures like ear shaping, ear cropping and earlobe removal, although an earlobe removal may sometimes be done in conjunction with pointing to make the ear appear as thought it’s more pointed than it really is.

The first ear pointings were done in the mid-nineties but it’s really taken off in the last three years or so thanks to practitioners like Steve Haworth, Lukas Zpira, Jonathan Martinez, Matias Tafel, Brian Decker and Emilio Gonzalez.

I now know tonnes of people that have had it done now. Most of them think of it as an elf thing. Some people I know think of it in a Vulcan or alien context but most people describe it as elvish. But while most people go for the obvious pointed shape others prefer something subtler. And some people want a sort of down facing point, almost like a troll or an orc. I really don’t think that that’s due to the popularity of the movies – I think that’s just coincidental. It probably has more to do with the fact that sometimes things just hit a critical mass where once it’s in the media enough a lot more people start doing it.

Steve Haworth was the person that performed those first ear pointings in the mid-nineties and he’s generally credited with having invented it. As far as I know Katzen was the first person to have her ears pointed as he developed the procedure specially for her after she she approached him and asked him if he could make her ears pointy. I believe he based it on an analogous procedure where animals have their ears docked.

Basically, the most common way of performing an ear pointing is a slight removal of cartilage, not very much, from the ear, and a fold. That fold is then sutured shut and it heals in the folded position. There are other ways of doing it though. I know that Samppa used a different method to folding and trimming the client’s helix to create the point. His involved quite radically restructured the ear after skinning it. By elevating the thin skin of the conch, trimming the exposed cartilage using surgical scissors and a scalpel whilst leaving the helix intact, and then removing the excess skin before stitching the skin back together as neatly as possible. It’s a painstakingly slow and incredibly delicate procedure but the result is pointed ears that look much more like the client was born with them.

In terms of risks, ear pointing is pretty low risk. I don’t want to call it simple, because you’re cutting up someone’s ear and suturing it back together, but it’s not that hard. The major risk is that your ears are going to look bad, not that you are going to end up in the hospital. And although there would be some change to your hearing it would be so minor that you may not even notice.

But you should, at all times, consider ear pointing to be a non-reversible procedure. That doesn’t mean that an experienced surgeon isn’t going to be able to repair it if you change your mind but do not think of it in that context. You really do not want to end up with a couple of things on the side of your head that you don’t like but can’t change. You can only wear hats for so much of the year.