Update 4/1/08: Here is video with more craptastic information about the lovely TSA and how they are here to help you. Let’s just hope that they get friendlier attitudes along with these new “advancements” in their strip search of your personal space.

I cannot be the only person out there thinking that security at airports is getting beyond ridiculous… can I? I enjoy my freedoms, but I also enjoy my security. When I go to the airport I expect to be safe and comfortable. I would never suspect a woman to rip the jewelry out of her tender nipples in order to hijack the plane and put the people aboard at risk.

I just read about a 37 year old Texas woman named Mandi Hamlin who had to remove her painful piercings after the female employee scanned her chest with the hand metal sensor. I know it is security measures, but they went a little overboard with this. Hamlin offered to expose her piercings after being told to step behind a curtain and remove the piercings or miss her flight.

“Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her,” said Hamlin’s attorney, Gloria Allred, reading from a letter she sent Thursday to the director of the TSA’s Office of Civil Rights and Liberties. Allred is a Los Angeles lawyer who often represents high-profile claims.

She said she heard male TSA agents snickering as she took out the ring. She was scanned again and was allowed to board even though she still was wearing a belly button ring.

“After nipple rings are inserted, the skin can often heal around the piercing, and the rings can be extremely difficult and painful to remove,” Allred said in the letter.

Sorry to have ranted on this, but it just peeves me that this happened… I definitely would fight to keep my piercings in, what if you had an even more private piercing like say your clit? or a Prince Albert? Jacob’s Ladder? I really would hate to have to be one of those people who have 12 piercings on a super sensitive area.

This is what I like to see from the TSA: