Tattoo Tour!

Here's a little video sharing my three tattoos. Thank you to the person who commissioned this! For more information on the origins on each tattoo, write-ups below :)

CW: discussion of self-harm


Tattoo one 

Right when I hit 18 I legally changed my name and got my first tattoo. Throughout highschool I struggled with my gender identity and Wicca became the first source I found articulating anything close to gender exploration. I read a book talking about ideas of working with different deities’ energies, working with deities of any gender, including those with gender noncomformance and fluidity. I never believed in a god or goddesses, but this gave me a way to conceptualize my relationship to my gender identity and society’s ideas around gender before I had the words trans and nonbinary. While this tattoo represents femininity and a reclamation of my femininity, I planned to pair it with the god symbol in my upper middle back. I tentatively considered some form of Celtic knotting to travel from one to the other to depict their interconnectedness. This represents my understanding of my gender identity then and somewhat now, though my language around gender is more sophisticated now. I think this speaks to how Contrapoints conceptualizes gender in her latest video. With that in mind, I recognize people may feel more comfortable with genders that don’t fit within this paradigm at all, and I recognize and respect them as well. 

People did have their opinions on the placement of my tattoo, which, fair enough. I knew it was in an intimate place. I was marking it for myself, and that felt fitting for my first tattoo. 

Once I hit eighteen years old, I felt released to do what I needed to become my own person. I legally changed my name, I shaved my head, and I got this tattoo. 

I struggled with a need to not only view my own body as desexualized and unshameful, but also to accept my asexuality at the time. Wicca was the first place to acknowledge in my life that sexuality can be a sacred, beautiful thing. I was surrounded by Catholic and other conservative Christianities as well as common high school slut shaming. While I considered myself ace and disinterested in sex for many reasons, I felt comfort in this and it made sense to me. This tattoo was one of many steps I took in high school to claim my body and my gender as mine.

One concern that I hadn’t foreseen was that people would be concerned about it stretching when I got pregnant. I hadn’t considered stretching skin impacting tattoos, but I also never intended on becoming pregnant for so many reasons that I had done carefully considered. The conversations casting doubt on me maintaining that stance made these conversations uncomfortable, and interestingly enough ended up infusing my own conviction that this is my body and not society’s, my mother’s, or anyone else’s that thinks I should have to bear a child because I’m female.

Also, this felt like a way to claim my body for myself and desexualize it. I put something spiritual there and it felt like a cleansing and acceptance of myself for me. It was a way to see my body as art and take it away from what felt like a constantly objectifying view of my body, where I felt pressure to give in to things I didn’t want.

I never got to finish the tattoo, and I’m reconsidering how it may fit into my future ink plans.

Tattoo two

This colorful tattoo broke my rule of no color. I was now in college, and had found the women’s studies department. I was learning about ethics of love and care in women’s studies, and started learning about the atrocities of war and imperialism. This was a time of high hope and feeling inspired by the feminists that came before me, from bell hooks on love and Patricia Hill Collins on coalition building to the anti-war feminist Cynthia Enloe. The design also signified my personal vehemently pacifistic mindset. I started realizing the necessity of self defense for many, but I doubled down on a self-sacrificing mindset. While I never felt the need to sacrifice my values or my identities, at this time I never intended on practicing any physical self defense for me. I feel differently now. While it is good to practice pacifism where possible, that is a deeply personal choice, and there are points in which the most moral choice will be violence in self defense or defense of others. I don’t speak on this much, because I think these concepts can be used in heinous ways, for example, further militarization under the guise of “protecting our women’s purity” while other methods of healing and peacemaking get overshadowed. This concept can get messy and lead to additional brutality. Peace is ultimately the goal, however, in many places there is not peace, but a “quieter”, constant oppression. Or in a place like the occupied Gaza, quite brutal, though often internationally ignored and silenced apartheid. We have to be very careful to look at who calls for peace are protecting and what power dynamics may be at play. This tattoo remains a constant reminder of that.

Tattoo three

This tattoo was supposed to be a celebration of surviving and overcoming self harm. I wish it also served as a wake-up call for me. I was in a dangerously intense relationship that was a result of continued housing instability, power dynamics, and forced trauma bonding. This tattoo is my least favorite of them by far, and recalls a time of struggling with actually being able to say no, and how when you can’t say no, it is hard to find your genuine “yes”es. While I meant to celebrate overcoming self-harm, months after getting it I ended up in the hospital needing stitches from a self-harm injury. It resulted in permanent nerve damage. That was a really bizarre situation. The person who triggered the episode drove me to the hospital, and had to leave the room while hospital staff questioned me on potential abuse. I took the blame, but I wish I would’ve reflected, acknowledged, and made concerted action to leave. I didn’t, and it took me years to finally let the relationship die. 

This tattoo is why I want to get my next ink. These tattoos are an active writing of my story, and my story is messy. I’ve thought of getting this one covered, but I’ve decided to incorporate it because every bit of it is a part of my story, down to me hating the design but feeling too guilty and obligated and scared of confrontation to stick up for myself…then dealing with the permanent ramifications of it. This is the tattoo I want to continue most. I’m in the tail end of a beautiful, painful, glorious, erotic, creative, chaos-dragon level destructive point of my life, all stemming from the wreckage and the bounty of that relationship, and I am growing from the decay and nourishment of it. So it makes sense to me most to start my sleeve around that. I’ve been looking for a trustworthy tattoo artist.

All of my tattoos so far have been focused primarily on meaning, but I want to work more on balancing that with aesthetic. I want my body art to be cohesive. Still, looking over them, I find myself quite satisfied overall with my collection. I may’ve done a few things differently now if I had the choice, but I don’t. Which makes sense, because that’s exactly how life is. Imperfect, messy, in the moment. But…still, beautiful in all of its pleasure and pain. I’m grateful for the time and the ink I’ve had the privilege to experience and I hope I have plenty of time and ink ahead of me! I have three tattoo projects I want to work towards: a continuation of the sleeve my mouse tattoo started, the god symbol I want to get on my back, and covering my hip in a giant octopus. I have the sleeve idea fairly fleshed out, now I’m just looking for a tattoo artist I want to work with and saving the money. I’m hoping this autumn I can get that done! Hopefully once I find a good artist, I can start detailing my life story across this canvas again.