My mother is an incredibly open minded person. Incredibly open minded until it comes to modifying the body, and its the one thing we just can’t agree on. Where as she is of the opinion that even shaving your legs is a form of self mutilation I see it simply as being self alteration.
From the age of about 5 years old I desperately wanted to get my ears pierced. Unfortunately for me no amount of begging, temper tantrums, or gentle persuasion was going to make her decide that allowing some stranger to staple little holes into her daughter’s ears was a good idea,
“But your perfect just the way you are, why do you want to ruin that?”
I didn’t want to ruin my perfect self, i just wanted to be able to decorate it with beautiful jewellery! So I spent years pretending i had my ears pierced. I would steal those twisty ties with the wire in them from the kitchen, cut them to size and squeeze them onto my earlobes as hard as I could until they hung there on their own. I would find sequins and glue them onto my earlobes, I made earring out of paper and cellotaped them on, and I saved up my pocket money to buy clip on earrings any chance I got. Over the years I reluctantly accepted the fact that I would probably have boring naked earlobes for the rest of my life. Then one afternoon (on December 21st I believe) after getting picked up from a friend’s house my mother took a detour and stopped in front of the local chemist.
“Right jump out, we’re going to get your ears pierced”.
I imagine I probably sat there with my mouth open speechless. After all these years of wishing and dreaming I was actually going to get beautiful jewels in my ears and I was suddenly terrified. I remember the bored shop assistant handing me a tray of earrings and telling me to take my time in choosing a pair. Well considering I had already decided on the pair I wanted about 5 years earlier it didn’t take me long to find them. I pointed to my ‘birthstone’, which happened to be a sparkling little blue set under September. By the time I got led into a tiny back room piled high with cosmetic boxes my hands were literally shaking with fear and excitement. The lady rubbed my lobes with disinfectant, marked the spot with an eyeliner pencil and asked if I thought they were even. I glanced in the mirror quickly and mumbled yes, I was too nervous to actually have a proper look.
“Ok love, here we go then, try to relax”.
Relax? Not a chance. I sat there with white knuckles, eyes tightly shut, and forgetting to breathe. Suddenly I heard a click followed an incredible burning sensation. It wasn’t as bad as I expected but I did N OT want to go through with the other side.
“Well we can’t just leave you like this can we love? Come on it’ll be over in a second”.
So ‘click and I was done. She handed me a bottle of disinfectant and a few care instructions which I barely listened too and led me back out to my mother. I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face and looked at my reflection in every shop window as we made our way back to the car
“I suppose one little earring in each ear isn’t so bad”, my mother grudgingly agreed.
She probably knew that that was the beginning of the end. Soon afterwards I insisted on shaving my legs, then my under arms, then I wanted a bra, then I started to dye my hair, and then god forbid I experimented with make up a little. She never told me I wasn’t allowed too, every now then she would just mumble,
“Well its your body so I can’t stop you from doing it, I just want you to know that I really don’t approve of it”.
I’m a bit of a mummy’s girl so the idea of ever doing anything to upset her was usually enough to make me reconsider but there were a few occasions where the guilt factor lost its affect. When I was 14 years old for instance I used to hang out at a friends place with a bunch of girls. This was definitely our time for losing innocence. We would sneak into the kitchen and steal the weed that was always kept in a large cookie jar on the top shelf in the pantry. Unfortunately we hadn’t really figured out what to do with it yet. We crept into her brother’s room when he was out and leafed through his stash off porn magazines. And one day after a bottle of peach schnapps from her parents liquor cabinet we decided to pierce each other. Armed with some old safety pins, some matches for sterilzing the needle, and a wine cork to push on, we set about giving each other some new holes. Holding the needle in place and putting the cork on the backside of my friends earlobe I began to push. It was a bizarre sensation, and by the time the needle was half way through I was ready to stop and throw up.
“Keep going, I just want to get this over with now”, my friend urged.
So I did, I pushed the needle in further until suddenly we heard a ‘pop’, and had broken through the skin on the other side. While she put an earring in and prepared to pierce the next friend I decided I would give my belly button a go. I sat slightly hunched over so I could get a better grip on the skin (I was, and still am a rather skinny wee thing). Again I positioned the cork on the under side (a lot more tricky on your stomach), took hold of the safety pin, and began to push and turn the needle. To my surprise there was very little pain and before long I could feel the tip of the needle on the other side. I only had this piercing in for a couple of days before my mother found out and forced me to remove it. Now that I think about it Im probably lucky she did or it would have led to a nasty infection. As far as I know the other friends had no problems with theirs and still have them to this day.
The last piercing I have had since then was during my last year of high school. Everybody was either getting their tongues or their upper ears pierced and I wanted one too. I don’t actually remember getting it done but I do know that I was again pierced by a friend. This time it wasn’t quite done in a friend’s bedroom with a rusty needle, but in a chemist with a piercing gun which for any piercing that is going through cartilige is a definite no no. In order for it to heal properly and avoid infection and scarring you need to go to a professional body piercer whole will do it with a needle, not a gun. Anyway to cut a long story short I didn’t, so after a long time it still hadn’t healed and I eventually took it out. Like any form of modification, piercing’s intrigue me to no end, having said that though I have never had the desire to get any since then. I’m very happy to just stick to my 2 little lobe piercings that I worked so hard at getting!
So you’d think that my mother would be safe from having a further mutilated daughter, i’m afraid not. When I was about 17 years old I became fascinated with tattoos. I even looked into getting one a couple of years later when my grandmother died. I inherited the golden pendant that she always wore and in it was a beautiful lotus flower. I spent months agonising over it, I even drew some terrible tribal designs to go around it. But after going to see several different tattooists they all told me it was too small and fine, and because I was a tattoo virgin they were worried I wouldn’t be able to sit still enough. I can say with great confidence that I’m glad they persuaded me otherwise! So a couple of years pass and I’m still bleating on about wanting to get a tattoo until one day when I’m in Germany my friends there had heard enough. On my birthday, in some god awful camp ground next to an airport (but that’s a different story altogether), I get handed a crumpled piece of paper.
“Happy Birthday”.
Ermmm great thanks. But then I open it to find a homemade voucher for 50euros that can only be spent on a tattoo.
“We’re sick of hearing about it all the time, just go and finally do it will you!”
There was another catch, I was leaving Europe the next week and they made it very clear that I had to get tattooed before I left or the voucher was worthless. Well what’s a girl to do? Go and make an appointment with the tattooist ASAP of course! The morning of my appointment I decided to get a simple black star on my inner wrist. I was supposed to meet my best friend at the shop so she could hold my hand, but when I got there she was nowhere in sight. I was really beginning to panic, I mean I was so nervous I could have been sick on the poor tattoo guy. I showed him a picture of the scraggly star I had drawn,
“Like this only, you know, straight”.
He grunted something and said he’d be back in a minute. I got the distinct feeling that he was pissed off at having to tattoo another stupid little picture on another stupid little girl. When he came back he told me to take a seat and put my arm on the plastic wrapped arm rest. He shaved my inner wrist, to this day I can’t figure out why because i have about as much hair there as I do on the palms of my hands (which is none in case you were wondering), and then after he did that the bastard sprayed disinfectant on it. I can tell you straight up that that was the most painful part of getting the whole tattoo. He then transferred the image onto my wrist until he had the perfect reflection of a star.
“Ummm isn’t this star a little bit big?” I asked nervously.
“No. It’s the same size as the one you showed me”.
It clearly wasn’t but I was to intimidated to argue. I had had something really tiny in mind, much like Gisele Bundchen’s little star, this one was at least twice the size if not bigger. I have to admit that I am actually glad about the size now, something smaller would have looked tacky. Anyway when I hear the gun start up, and my friend still hasn’t showed up to pity me through this I totally start to panic,
“Hey I’m a little bit nervous, can you tell me something that will, you know, make me feel better?”
“Don’t watch”.
So I shut my eyes tight and tried to think about something else.
“Okay I’m going to start now, you need to relax or it’s going to be uncomfortable”.
I got ready to flinch and was astounded to find that there was no need. It was pain, yes, but somehow it was so soothing. Before long I sat and watched intently as the needle marched in and out of my wrist leaving a black trail. Suddenly my only regret was that I hadn’t chosen something bigger because the whole thing was over in about 10 minutes. Just as I was finishing up my friend walked in the door. I was shaky as hell from all that unnecessary adrenalin but could not shake the smirk from my face. Things stopped being quite so funny a couple of days later when I had to fly home. Let me tell you that sitting on a 24 hour flight with a throbbing new tattoo is far from great. I don’t know if it had to do with the sensitive spot it was in or the change in air pressure but my wrist swelled up quite nicely. It took my mother all of about 10 minutes to notice my tattoo when I got home,
“What’s that on your wrist?”
“Nothing”.
“It’s not nothing, come on show me”.
So I pulled my sleeve up a bit further.
“Hmm. Is it real?”
“Yes”.
“Hmm. Well I suppose its not too offensive”.
And for a week or so after that she actually took some interest in watching it scab up and heal, but it hasn’t ever been mentioned since.
Now I knew for certain that this would not be my first and last tattoo. Although it took a couple more years before I got tattooed again I never stopped thinking about it, never stopped thinking about the sensation of getting tattooed. I found this quite odd because I have a very un-addictive personality, and yet the idea of getting tattooed practically consumed me. The next time I got tattooed I had begun to think about starting a sleeve. However because I am an overly-sensible person (most of the time) I wanted to test out a bigger piece in a less visible area first. After thinking it over for just a couple of months I booked in to see the tattooist. We talked things over briefly, I told her approximately what I had in mind but told her she was the artist so I would leave it in her hands. We decided that because it could take up to 4 hours I should book in for 2 separate sessions. As fate would have it though I got a strange skin rash a few days before hand and had to cancel my first appointment, unfortunately the tattooist was moving overseas a few weeks later and was fully booked out, so the only option was to get the whole thing done in one go. On the day I got there early enough to dash across the road and try to eat some breakfast, it just wouldn’t go down so I had a coffee and slinked into the studio. She was already there waiting for and showed me a very basic sketch of what I had chosen, most of it was going to be free hand. We went through all the formalities, she showed me the sterilized needles, did the paper work, disinfected the area, shaved it, transferred the image and we were off. These tattoos were on my back, yes my lower back but let me tell you about them before you roll your eyes. They are 2 symmetrical art nouveau swallows, each about the size of my hand. So they really just brush past the old tramp stamp label. Initially I thought I wanted them much smaller and on my stomach, I’m very glad to have been talked out of that! I think the worst thing about being tattooed for 3 or 4 hours straight is that your legs start to go numb. I don’t think I’ve straddled a chair like that for so long and by the end of it I was getting in a right foul mood. As far as the pain goes it was there! There were times when the pain was so great that I could feel my stomach quiver, but then after an hour or so your bodies chemicals kick in to deal with the pain and everyting starts to go sort of numb. I have to be honest, it took me a while to really fall in love with those new tattoos. In the future I will definitely be involved in the planning of them a little more, but now I couldn’t imagine my body without them. It’s been nearly 2 years and I still look at them at every opportunity I get!
Now iIm ready for another one, and this time I want it to be on my arms. I don’t intend to get tattooed anywhere else so its either my arms or nothing. Obviously this is a huge decision though, so I am being very careful to consider it properly. And what about my poor mother you ask? Hmmm yes my poor mother, she is a big part of why I haven’t started yet. The topic of tattooing is a very sensitive one with us, she has made it clear how she feels about them. Every time they slip into a conversation she becomes very quiet and sometimes I’m scared she will start crying. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth seeing her get so upset, then I remind myself that it is my body not hers. In the end these pieces have immense meaning for me, in a way they are a form of therapy and I could not imagine being without them.
Body art/ modification and tattooing have fascinated me for a long time. To be honest I keep waiting for it to just be another faze I am going through, for me to grow out of it, but 10 years on I’m still as fascinated, if not more than I ever was. Body modification from all over the world and through out history has me mesmerized. I am interested in anatomy and what the body is capable of, and the fact that you can etch colourful pictures in your skin is just amazing. I have a large amount of books on the topic, I live in a country where we have the most amount of tattooed people in the world, and where tattooing is an important part of the culture and history. I also recently discovered that the women of my fathers country are also frequently tattooed and a look forward to finding out more about that. I can understand that tattooing is not for everybody, and that many people find it distasteful and still relate it to the lower class,
‘Tattoo’s are worn by sailors, whores, and inmates”, my mother would say.
I also agree that there are some really terrible tattoos out there that a lot of people come to regret (I’m glad I got piercings when I younger and not tattoos because I’m sure I would have some regrets there too). I have a theory though, and you might disagree, but I think that the people who often wish they hadn’t have gotten inked are the ones with tiny tattoos, the flash you pick off the wall. I have never come across a heavily tattooed person with large pieces that has regrets. I recently went to talk to somebody about getting my arm done, I told him I wasnt sure how much I wanted to get done and I just wanted to go one picture at a time. He advised me to start thinking about the whole piece now, even if I got it done slowly because otherwise you’ll end up looking like a mismatched jigsaw puzzle.
My final opinion is that everybody should do with themselves what makes them feel comfortable, beautiful, and happy. It’s easy to judge people without having any knowledge of their reasons.
Do as you will as long as you hurt nobody.
“Ah sorry folks, sorry, mental health moment. Sorry guys, mental health”.
