Piercings don't make a person unintelligent, lack a sense or humor or continue to be beautiful. I like girls who are pierced, tattooed, non-pierced, non-tattooed, whatever. You may see those things as something that flies in the face of her outstanding qualities but not only is it an old way of thinking, it's a very close minded way of thinking.
There's nothing counter intuitive about a facial piercing other than the fact she'll be looked down upon by those who are not willing to look past something they don't personally agree with. If said people would just judge someone by who they are rather than what they look like, there would be no problem at all.
For me, I don't see her choices as being the problem at all.
If you hated that story, this one is really gonna bug you.
Several years ago, I was earning my MBA. One of my classmates was a cute, funny, intelligent young woman. She also was (in my opinion) into the goth thing. Black died hair, white makeup, black lipstick and nails, random piercage. Well, she was that way for the first year, any way. When we returned from our internships to start the second year, she had natural brown hair, 'normal' makeup, and no longer wore her piercings (except for one in each ear, at the standard locale).
No one forced her to change. Her rights weren't violated. She was not treated poorly by anyone. She did understand, however, that how you preseent yourself is a driver of how people perceive you. Being the cute goth girl was not a way for her to succeed in the way that she wanted to, so she adapted.
When my wife and I advised our (still) favorite server, we were not judging her based on her looks. We were expressing our fears that other people would judge her based on those decisions.