A Tattooed Lady

When I was a teenager my aunt came home with a tattoo. It is a small shamrock (her boyfriend at the time was Irish). It was her first and only tattoo and she had the good sense to put it in a place that is easily hidden. When she got hers, the stereotypes around women and tattoos were still of the "biker babe" and "women in prison" variety, so she kept her ink to herself. She did, however, show it to me and I was immediately smitten with the idea of someday getting a tattoo.

That infatuation never left me and when I turned 18 I dragged a couple of friends down to the red light district (because that is where such things were to be had...) in Honolulu and got my first "tat." It was on my hip (again, a place easily concealed) and was a simply drawn, small butterfly. I think it cost me $20 in 1982. The woman who did the work was a little startled when I walked in to the shop (NOT parlor). She said I wasn't the clientele she was used to seeing (wasn't even sure how to address that statement). Thirty-plus years ago my tattoo garnered lots of attention. Not that I showed it to many, although there was one night at Moose McGillycuddy's in Honolulu, after a particularly festive Happy Hour, when I showed the New Zealand National Rugby Team (at least, that was their story) my butterfly...but I digress.

Simply admitting that I HAD a tattoo back then elicited questions such as "Are you a biker chick?" ("Yup, Schwinn Beach Cruiser is my ride.") or "Are you in a GANG?" ("Yeah, don't mess with us, we drink Crystal Light and Vodka and ride the bus to the beach!"). Tattoos at the time were not about straight-arrow middle class people, they were about rebels, and margins and bucking whatever system. But I had always been fascinated by how humans had decorated themselves across time and cultures. I had no idea that the little butterfly would start something...well...bigger. It took four years before I would get my second piece.

I now have seven.

Tattoos have enjoyed quite an explosion of popularity since I got my first. No longer the purview of sailors, rough men and fallen women ;) ink is widely considered an art form that continues to expand itself in terms of what is possible. Old School is a style that represents clean lines, bold colors and iconic designs, but there are gorgeous pieces that look like watercolor; photo-realism pieces of people, animals and places; a resurgence of tribal-inspired tattoos; and every hybrid imaginable. Tattoo artists pride themselves in the fact that they are artists. Many specialize in certain styles and colors, or black and grey. My artist of choice, Prakash Spex, the man I have gone to for my most recent tattoos, is amazing with color and interpreting ideas into design. I have very fair skin with no yellow or olive cast to it, unlike my husband who is olive-skinned,  so color is "my thing" and the pieces can show amazing detail and bright hues. But none of that would be possible without the talent of the man holding the tattoo machine.

Spex Tattoo

The thing about tattoos; people tend to either love them or hate them. There is not much middle ground. Oh sure, there are those individuals who got one when they were young (often in the military) but now don't mention them and are almost loathe to show their old ink to anyone. There are also some expected questions/arguments against tattoos I heard over the last three decades that are pretty generic in nature:

1. But would you show your grandmother? I have, as well as the rest of my family. When I was young they remained wisely quiet thinking, perhaps correctly, that if they railed against them I might get more-I was young, you know?

2. What does your Mom think? She was cool but never wanted one until she got cancer and HAD to have these little dot tattoos to identify the borders of her radiation. Then she asked if each dot could be a flower or a diamond or a butterfly...The party-poopers (her words) said no.

3. How will you get a good job? Well, I was not going to apply for a job that required me to show my hip, or ankles or shoulder, so I was sure it wasn't a problem. Now I work at a National Laboratory and half the people I see have tattoos (Which tells me more of them have them, but they can't be seeeeen). Now, I am not a fool so that is why each of mine can be hidden if I wish. It's not like I have a Tweety bird holding a N.O.W flag permanently inked onto my forehead...

4. What about as you age? Listen, I spent most of my life in the sun without sunscreen (or worse, with UV-encouraging oils slathered on my body), I have bigger concerns than how my tattoos will age.

5. People who don't like tattoos (on themselves or other people) tend to think that people who get tattoos are doing it as some form of "look at me" expression. That may be true for some, but I am more of the belief that people who tend to love tattoos (to the point of getting several), love them as intensely personal artifacts.

Finally, if the tattoos have any kind of size and detail, they represent what might end up being a significant investment of time (each section done must heal before the next is completed), energy and money. I would hope that anyone getting something so significant would be doing it only for themselves (or their gang leader--oh, just kidding!).  

My tattoos are for nobody but me. I can hide them when I don't want to deal with whatever vestiges of the stigma I may run into and if I show them I am showing what I think are beautiful pieces of art that happen to adorn my body. Recently I finished (well, you know what I mean, my artist finished) a large piece on my lower leg. It sits on my outer calf and runs from my ankle to just below my knee. It is bright and detailed and stunning, but it was done for me. When my husband said I needed to start wearing skirts more to show it, I said, "No I don't, I got it for me, nobody else." This is not to say that I am not immensely proud of the work and I do have every intention of showing it, but that wasn't my purpose in getting the work done.

I would submit that for every tattoo done, there is a different reason for getting it put on the body.

By the time I was 33, I had four small pieces. Each tattoo represented something to me; whether it was a special event, good friends I shared time with, or a personal value. When I was 35 I covered my first tattoo with a larger piece. The change was mostly because I wanted something more intricate and something fun to represent what felt like a newness in my attitude at the time. So, the simple first butterfly was gone, covered by a Cheshire Cat not quite the size of my hand. That was it for a long (11 years)  time.

People used to ask me if getting a tattoo hurt and I would blithely say that they aren't bad, that it reminded me of  a pin scratching against the skin for a few minutes. Well, duh. When the tattoo is tiny and has maybe three colors, max, in its design, the tattoo doesn't really hurt. Then I started getting bigger tattoos. My fifth piece resides on the (tender) inside of my forearm and is about the size of a standard playing card. Between the placement, the size, the detail and the array of colors, that piece was downright uncomfortable. My unpleasant surprise, however, was how much discomfort I experienced after the piece was done. It was sore for a couple of days. Two years later I decided on a design that incorporated a tribal manta ray with additional elements drawn into the piece. Including some color, the effect was that of a very subtle mosaic and this piece is about ten inches across and eight inches tall at its furthest points. This ray lives on the back of my left shoulder and took about three and a half hours to complete. It hurt. It hurt during and it hurt after. I was tired and sore when we were done. I am fastidious about after-care so it was also somewhat of a pain in the ass to ensure it stayed clean and moist while it healed. I wondered if I would ever get another piece that big.

Spex Tattoo

I didn't; I got a bigger one.

The decision to get the piece on my calf was a serious one. I wanted a certain look and feel for the design and my artist demonstrated that to get what I wanted, I needed to go big. Additionally, unlike the ray on my back, this tattoo included many colors, lots of detail, and loads of shading that created even more depth and detail to the final effect.Now, it should be admitted here that I realize that my tattoo is not big by any means compared to some. A friend has her entire back done and my brother has a half-sleeve. That being said, my calf took four sessions of over three hours each.  I have heard people say "Oh wow, don't you love it when the endorphins kick in and it doesn't even hurt; like its numb?!" ........Uhhh, NO, because that has never happened for me. On the contrary, from the moment it started to several days later, I felt EVERYTHING. First, for the three-plus hours it took to get the session done, and then for a few days when it felt initially like my leg was 2nd degree sunburned to finally just being irritated. And god forbid I let something like my pants touch it too soon because then I would need to peel it off and hope some of the newly inked skin didn't go with the material, in which case I would end up looking like some hack-job home tattooist had done the work (and risk the ire of Prakash). I learned a brutal lesson after the second calf session when I had the work done on a Wednesday evening and had to go to work the next day. After a day of my pants (flowy as they were) rubbing against the "wound," I had irritated the piece directly into Scabville. From then on, I only had sessions on Friday evenings so I could keep all fabric off the ink for a couple of days.What is interesting is that during my last session (thank the Fates I made it that far), I said to Prakash, "You know what the worst part of getting the tattoo is?" He responded, "The wiping?" YES, the damn wiping! I understand the need for wiping the piece while working it; to remove the excess ink, to keep it lubricated with ointment, etc. But, in order to keep little fibers from sticking to the new tattoo, less-than-soft paper towels are used and let me just say...OMG. Three hours of wiping is almost enough to send me off the table.

Now when people see my ink and ask if it hurt, I say "Of course it hurt, it's a f***ing tattoo." I mean really, single and multiple needles puncturing your skin (and with them dragging ink into the dermis-contrary to myth, the ink isn't inside the needles, it is not a syringe-like effect) at high speed? Yes, it hurts.

Prakash calls the process (especially for larger, detailed pieces) sort of a right of passage. Sitting still (and I am a stoic rock during this process, if I do say so myself) for several hours uses energy. While I do relax somewhat during the process, I strive to remain alert so when the needle hits an unexpectedly sensitive area, I don't jump and ruin whatever is being worked at the time. I spend a lot of time telling myself to "be still." You would be surprised at the strange array of nerve responses across what one would assume is the same area of the leg.

Three large-ish tattoos in three years. I think I am done for a while, but when I stated that out loud, Prakash simply said, "Suuure." He has a point, people who like tattoos tend to keep getting them. Then again, I suppose you are never too old. He told me he had recently given a small tattoo to an 81 year-old woman. I have no idea why, but she did it and was obviously not worried about one of the aforementioned main arguments against tattoos: that when the skin ages, the tattoo will be unrecognizable. I have already assumed that in another 40 or so years, I will spend lots of time reassuring my doctors that I don't have a giant hematoma on my calf.