Mom sparks outrage on Facebook over baby's cheek piercing

A mom from Ohio sparked outrage on Facebook after she shared a photo of her baby daughter smiling with her new dimple "piercing."

"So I got the baby girl's dimple pierced!!" Enedina Vance wrote on June 28. "It looks so cute, right?!! I just know she's gonna love it!! She'll thank me when she's older lol If she decides she doesn't like it, she can just take it out, no big deal."

"I'm the parent, she is MY CHILD, I will do whatever I want!!" the tongue-in-cheek post continued. "I make all of her decisions until she's 18, I made her, I own her!! I don't need anyone's permission, I think it's better, cuter, & I prefer her to have her dimple pierced. Its (sic) NOT abuse!!"

It's certainly not abuse -- the baby's dimple hardware is actually just the result of a well-done photoshop job.

Vance, an outspoken anti-circumcision activist, explained in a subsequent post that she created the contentious image to prove a point to parents about their kids' authority over their own bodies.

"Wow, so as (hopefully) everyone knows, my last post was FAKE. I photoshopped that picture of the baby to look like I had her dimple pierced. It is in fact PHOTOSHOPPED​​​," she wrote.

Vance went on to say that she believes circumcision is so widely accepted over body alterations like piercings in infants because of sexism, superstition and fear.

"People would rather continue to inflict an unnecessary & irreversible ritual onto their defenseless infant, than to have to admit that they don't know. They don't know why it's done, if it has to be done, what the functions of that body part are, or what happens if they were to just leave it alone!" she explained. "So the cycle continues, all because parents are too afraid or to proud to admit that they just don't know."

"Education is key & the truth is, genital cutting is completely unnecessary. Its NOT cleaner, not healthier, & definitely does not look better!! But most importantly, it is NOT your body to alter or modify for aesthetic purposes."

But many people apparently did not pick up on the heavy does of sarcasm in Vance's original post, as is evident by the slew of angry comments on the post, which has now been shared nearly 13,000 times.

In fact, so many people reported Vance's post that her account was eventually disabled entirely.

Although she has received a lot of hate for her post, Vance said that in a way, she's glad that people reacted the way that they did.

"I didn't take any of their comments, anger, or hate to heart. They were, in their own way, try to protect my baby," she wrote on Facebook.

"However, I'm disappointed that it didn't really go much further than that," she continued. "Once they were made aware of what my post was actually about, they just said oh & went on their way. Others dismissed the connection between the dimple piercing & genital cutting & felt it necessary to attempt to explain why they cut their child. Its ironic that they were ready to beat me to death over my excuses for piercing my baby, but then they used the same EXACT excuse to justify cutting their baby."