Alisa Liu’s gold medal smile comes with hardware.
Millions of viewers tuned in Thursday to watch the 20-year-old win an Olympic gold medal in women’s figure skating, and many left with the same questions. “What does she have on her teeth?” The silver glitter on her front teeth is a “smiley” piercing, and she did it herself.
Liu’s jewelry is technically a frenulum piercing, a modified version that penetrates the thin tissue that connects the upper lip and gums. It is called a “smiley” because the jewelry is hidden behind the lips and only appears when the wearer smiles wide enough to see the gum line.
“I had the hole drilled a little over two years ago now,” Liu told NBC affiliate TMJ4 News ahead of the Milan-Cortina Olympics. “I asked my sister to hold my lips, looked in the mirror, inserted the piercing needle, and oh yeah, I just went through it.”
The Oakland, Calif., native rated his pain as “zero out of 10.”
After retiring at the age of 16, Liu took up piercing as a hobby during the two years he was away from competition. “Getting your ears pierced in a store is so expensive for no reason, so I decided to educate myself and be a bit of a DIY girl,” she explained on the In The Loop podcast in 2024. “It takes a lot of trust in yourself to put your earrings in the right place on your jewelry.”
“I bought everything I needed, including piercing needles,” she added. “We don’t use safety pins or stabbing guns.”
Professional smiley piercings typically cost between $30 and $100 and heal within 4 to 12 weeks, but over time they can cause enamel erosion, chipped or cracked teeth, and gum recession.
Piercings are just part of Liu’s signature alt-girl look. Her dark brunette hair is punctuated with horizontal bleach-blond stripes, each stripe added to each year like a tree trunk marking the passage of time.
According to USA Today, Liu told reporters before the tournament, “I actually wanted raccoon stripes three years ago, but I thought they were too long and would be difficult to maintain.”
“Then I wanted to be a tree and add a new ring every year. So the next year I made a second one and it just grew and I did the same thing this year. I’m going to keep adding one each time.”
She asked St. Louis-based stylist Kelsey Miller to brighten up her stripes for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January.
Liu was born in Clovis, California, the eldest of five children. She was raised by her father, Arthur Liu, a lawyer and Chinese democratic activist who defected to the United States in the 1990s, and her mother, Yang Qingxin, also known as Mary.
In 2022, it was reported that Liu and his father were targeted by Chinese government-sponsored spies. When the skater learned this fact, she said, she felt like she was living in a movie.
The two-time Olympic gold medalist scored a career-best 226.79 points in Milan, becoming the first American woman to win a gold medal in individual figure skating since Sarah Hughes in 2002.
