Inked Talk

Symbolic ribbons are everywhere - cars sport yellow ribbons to support our troops, red ribbons stand for AIDS awareness, and the pink ribbon is the symbol of breast cancer survival. Some cancer survivors have taken the pink ribbon to a new level by getting a tattoo of the ribbon as a symbol of their battle with cancer, or as an emblem of support for a loved one who is fighting that battle.

The most simple emblem of breast cancer survival is the plain pink ribbon tattoo. This woman chose the top of her foot for hers. Plain and straightforward, this small tattoo sends a strong message.

Others have worked the pink ribbon into a larger tattoo concept, adding new symbolism to the ribbon itself. The butterfly ribbon is a popular choice. The butterfly has traditionally been a symbol of change or transformation and beauty, making this tattoo a conceptually beautiful piece.

Another example of the butterfly and pink ribbon, this one with affirmative text: “I Am A Survivor.”

The tattoo community has also found a cause in breast cancer awareness. The Healing Art Foundation benefits from Tats and Art for a Cure, a series of events aimed raising awareness for the fight against breast cancer by bringing together tattoo artists, piercers and fine artists. The Healing Arts Foundation has worked extensively with cancer survivors by tattooing over surgery scars, providing areola re-pigmentation, and simply providing the artwork and ink to make the survivor feel beautiful and reclaim her body.

It seems logical that someone who has gone through a battle with cancer or who has stood by and supported a loved one facing that battle may be reluctant to voluntarily alter their bodies, but that conclusion underestimates the indomitable spirit of so many cancer survivors. A tattoo’s meaning is as individual as the tattoo itself or the person bearing it, but pink ribbon tattoos send a strong message of survival, of overcoming fear and adversity, and of a refusal to let illness win.

Steampunk is a fantasy/fiction subgenre which can be described in its most basic terms as the incorporation of new technology with Victorian style. Imagine a truck powered by a steam engine, or a zeppelin with smoke stacks. Infuse the Victorian style - wood paneling, polished brass, gears and mechanisms - with futurism and high technology, and you have a good idea of what steampunk entails. Sometimes it takes the route of a “path not taken” type of alternate history, and it is in some ways similar to cyberpunk. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is probably the most recent, well-known movie that exemplifies the steampunk style, and the XBOX 360 game Bioshock is an excellent exemplar of the genre.*

Elements of steampunk have certainly attracted the attention of some tattoo collectors. Where tattoos are concerned, the theme of “the machine in the man” has inspired some great ink which its bearers attribute to the steampunk genre. By its very nature, the steampunk feel can make for some beautiful tattoos that go beyond a simple picture on the skin.

Here is a relatively common tattoo concept: the skin appears to be torn away, revealing the biomechanics below which power the man. Strictly speaking, it is debatable whether this is completely “steampunk,” but the blend of machine and man really has a great steampunk feel.

Another great steampunk-inspired tattoo - the cogs at the elbow joint and down the arm suggest something more than human.

This tattoo is a good thematic blend of the two previous - here, the shoulder area appears cut away to reveal underlying mechanical works.

From a visual standpoint, steampunk-inspired tattoos seem almost obvious. When skin is the canvas, it isn’t a stretch to envision what lies beneath. Imagining something greater than reality is, artistically, the next logical step. Steampunk tattoos have such great potential that it is only the genre’s relative obscurity that makes them as uncommon as they are.

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*For more of an explanation on steampunk, MTV’s website actually has a nice video that serves as a decent introduction to the genre, with some great accompanying visuals.

The neck tattoo is a bold statement. Like hand and facial tattoos, neck tattoos are very hard to conceal, meaning that every first impression - be it an employer, a police officer, or even a neighbor - can be colored by their perception of tattoos. Tattoos have clearly become more mainstream since the 1990s, but are the more visible and more difficult to hide tattoos following the trail blazed by the tramp stamp?

An article in the New York Times on Tuesday asserts that neck tattoos, once reserved for “gang members, prison inmates, members of the Russian mob and the rapper Lil Wayne,” are now entering the domain of the mundane. However, the article also goes out of its way to acknowledge that those who sport facial and neck tattoos, as well as those with unusual or excessive piercings, still face plenty of obstacles to acceptance in the workplace. Courts have repeatedly upheld workplace appearance requirements, including those that forbid visible piercings and tattoos. However, times are changing and workplaces are certain to evolve as our culture’s perception of tattooed people changes.

While the New York Times piece reads more like a cautionary tale than a real look at the increased prevalence of hard-to-conceal tattoos, the fact that the NYT has taken on the subject at all is a statement in and of itself.

You can find the original New York Times article from September 24, 2008 here at this link.

Readers: what are your thoughts on this? Have you noticed more neck tattoos on “unlikely suspects” in recent years? Tattoo artists - have you found more customers with “mundane” jobs seeking more prominent tattoos?

Much of that tattooed world has looked on with some amusement at the popularity that tattoo designs have enjoyed on clothing in the past few years. While tattoo inspired clothing may be expected at stores like Spencers or Hot Topic, nowadays even the most mundane department stores have featured clothing with tattoo-style designs. With tattoos becoming so mainstream, this isn’t really surprising. What is surprising is just how far tattoo-inspired merchandise has gone.

The Ed Hardy clothing line is probably the most recognizable of the “tattoo-inspired clothing,” with malls everywhere featuring t-shirts adorned with famous skull/snake/geisha-type designs. In fact, the Ed Hardy “vintage tattoo wear” line goes far beyond simple shirts and has expanded into jeans, swimsuits, shoes, belts, and, oddly enough, perfume.

Yes, “tattoo-inspired” perfume for the ladies, and cologne, for men.

One review of the women’s scent describes it as: “a fruity floral with notes of apple soufflé, mango, wild strawberry, rudy red grapefruit, freesia petals, watery muguet, linden blossom, warm amber, musk, tonka bean and vanilla pudding.” The men’s cologne “is a woody floral featuring bergamot, mandarin, clary sage, thuja, mint julep accord with ozone, musk, sequoia forest and amber.”

I like a lot of things about tattoo shops. I love the flash-splattered walls and the buzz of the tattoo gun, I enjoy talking to the artists, I even secretly relish in the palpable tension in the air surrounding a person choosing her first tattoo and wondering whether it will hurt. But of everything I love about tattoos and tattoo shops, none of them are associated with their smell. Really, the tattoo shops I have been in typically smell like the Taco Bell meal that was devoured quickly between tattooing sessions.

Of all of the things in the world that could be used as an “inspiration” for perfume and cologne, I can’t say that I would ever, ever choose tattoos.

The only conclusion that I can draw on this rather bizarre product comes from Yogurt, of Spaceballs fame:

“Merchandising! Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made. Spaceballs the T-shirt. Spaceballs the lunchbox. Spaceballs the coloring book. Spaceballs… the flamethrower!”

Though I confess - I’ll stay tuned for my Ed Hardy flamethrower.

Until recently, tattoos in America have been largely restricted to sailors and bikers. Similarly, tattoos in Japan have traditionally been associated with Japan’s organized crime body - the Yakuza. The Yakuza have historically used extensive full body tattooing as means of identification and as status symbols. For this reason, tattoos have long had a negative connotation in Japan.

Older Japanese still tend to associate tattoos with organized crime, and for that reason public baths in Japan have often restricted the entry of anyone with tattoos.

Even though Japanese water parks are targeted at a younger generation, tattooed people in Japan still have a hard time locating a water park that will allow them in. The business owners reason that tattoos are still frightening to some due to the Yakuza connection, and seeing tattooed people walk around the water park would make some of the customers nervous.

With more and more young Japanese people getting tattoos that are totally unrelated to Yakuza activities, Japan is seeing a slight change in the no-tattoo policies. A small minority of water parks do allow tattooed patrons, but they require that all tattoos be fully covered while in the park. That’s not always an easy task. Long sleeved shirts and long pants make little sense at a water park on a hot day.

In America, the attitude and perception of tattoos has changed greatly in the past twenty years. Japan is sure to eventually follow suit as the association between tattoos and Yakuza activity becomes diluted. Until then, tattooed people in Japan will have to deal with their society’s outdated perceptions of body art and the restrictions that come with it.

A few months ago, Inked Talk reported on the dangers of an allergic reaction to an additive often used to darken the henna used in henna temporary tattoos.

A story in today’s DailyIndia.com reports a young boy’s severe allergic reaction to a henna tattoo. His reaction sounds particularly severe - it required four trips to the hospital and he missed a month of school. The article categorizes it as a “botched” henna tattoo. However, the symptoms described sound much more like a severe allergic reaction.

Worldwide, henna tattoo artists continue to use PPD as an additive in henna to darken the henna and create a black tattoo. With more and more reports of allergic reactions to henna tattoos, it is amazing that little is being done to regulate the practice.

Earthly Body is a company promoting hemp-based skin care, including a new line of tattoo aftercare products. When they were kind enough to send me some samples, I was admittedly skeptical. Earthly Body’s products are free of a lot of the bad stuff that makes other tattoo aftercare products work, so I seriously doubted that a petroleum free, lanolin-free, vegan, paraben-free, cruelty-free product could really be effective. When it comes to tattoo aftercare, I am a firm believer in A&D cream. Nevertheless, I waited until I got a new tattoo so I could try out Earthly Body’s healing products and report my findings to my readers at Inked Talk.

Earthly Body suggests a two-step process for tattoo healing. The first step is their “Tattoo Tonic Miracle Oil.” This fresh-scented oil is applied with an eyedropper to the fresh tattoo until it heals. The oil itself is smooth, and it immediately softens the skin. The tattoo I used the Miracle Oil on is a large, colorful piece on my calf. I’ve had problems with tattoos healing on my leg before, so I thought this piece would be a good test.

The tattoo healed very differently than any other tattoo that I have had. I have very dry skin so my tattoos tend to get very dry and flaky no matter how much A&D lotion I apply. This tattoo experienced very little of the dry, uncomfortable flakiness that I had dealt with for every other tattoo. The tattoo healed smoothly, cleanly, and very quickly. The Miracle Oil is available on Earthly Body’s website for $11.00. I used only a small portion of my bottle on my tattoo, so your $11.00 goes a long way.

Step Two of Earthly Body’s tattoo aftercare plan includes using their Miracle Lotion after the tattoo begins to heal. The lotion keeps the skin moist and is said to prevent fading. In my experience, the lotion worked at least as good as A&D cream. The Miracle Lotion is also available for $11.00 on the Earthly Body website.

So what is my verdict, my overall opinion? I am glad to have tried Earthly Body’s products, and I will continue to use the Tattoo Miracle Oil on future tattoos as I am quite pleased with the healing result.

Thanks to Earthly Body for giving me the opportunity to try out their great products!

For more information, visit Earthly Body’s website!

Salvador Dali, the famous Spanish surrealist painter, is an artist that most recognize by name. Those who don’t know Dali are easily prompted with the reminder that he’s the “melted clocks painter.” Everyone knows the melted clocks (Or, “The Persistence of Memory,” should the question arise on Trivial Pursuit). What does Spanish surrealism have to do with tattoos?

After seeing a lovely rendition of Van Gogh’s Starry Night as a full back tattoo, I have been fascinated by famous works of art as subjects for tattoos. For that reason, I began to do an informal survey of tattoo galleries searching for which famous artists’ works seem to be the most prevalent subjects of tattoos.

In perusing websites with extensive tattoo galleries, it seemed to me that Salvador Dali-inspired ink was far, far more common than Van Gogh, Picasso, and other artists whose works have found their way onto flesh. Why is that?

What is it about Dali that inspires people to carry his work on their skin permanently? His paintings aren’t “pretty” in any sort of traditional sense. Many are nightmarish perceptions - strange, twisted takes on reality. Some suggest suffering, and they present something frightening, unsettling and uncomfortable.

Perhaps that statement explains exactly what the attraction to Dali is for some tattoo enthusiasts. Tattoos aren’t associated with traditional beauty. although it certainly isn’t hard to see the beauty in tattoos and tattooed people. The self-infliction of pain goes against the most basic human instincts, but we do it anyway for the sake of a good tattoo or a well-placed piercing. To many, the sight of a heavily-modified person, be it tattoos, piercings or other mods, stirs a reaction of fascination and horror. A cross between “Look at that!” and “Why would she do that to herself?”

Maybe Dali makes a whole lot of sense for a tattoo.

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Mom’s Soap Box

The Internet is an amazing thing. Shopping, music, networking, games…it truly has everything to keep you entertained for hours while you should be working. It was no surprise to find quite a round-up of interesting, funny, and just plain bizarre tattoo-related videos on YouTube, the popular video sharing site. Here are some of the best of the best:

Yes, tattoos hurt.
This video features a young woman who just can’t manage the pain from her ankle tattoo. She’s being held by two people (one of which appears to be her mother), while she is chewing on what looks like a yellow plastic bit and screaming and crying wildly. You have to admire the patience of her tattoo artist who is totally taking it all in stride. In the future, perhaps she should stick to temporary tattoos.

Tattoos: A Dangerous Art

This excellent little mini-documentary exposes the dangers of home tattooing, as well as the relative simplicity of constructing a homemade tattoo gun. The video nicely contrasts the professional, clean environment of a good tattoo parlor with the workspace of a kitchen-table scratcher. Excellent subject matter. This is a well-made video and worth a watch.

Japanese Full Body Tattoo Video

This National Geographic video highlights some beautiful Japanese full-body tattoos. The video shows not only some of the incredible tattoos but it even briefly goes into technique and history. National Geographic has disabled video embedding for this piece, but you can follow this link to see this amazing piece.

This is just a small glimpse of some great tattooing videos on YouTube.

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Pop Buzz UK

Last week Inked Talk featured an article about a company in the UK that was surprised by how many people responded to a spoof ad offering to pay cash to anyone who would tattoo the company’s logo on their body. (If you missed the previous article, you can catch it here). It seems incredible that over one hundred people responded favorably to the fake advertisement, hoping to make some quick cash by selling ad space on their body. Those crazy Brits.

However, this apparently isn’t just some off phenomenon happening on the other side of the pond. In what appears to be a serious move to raise some funds for a motorcycle, a West Virginia man is selling ad space on his body.

James Burns has put his offer on eBay. With the starting bid at $99, Burns says he will get a tattoo of a company logo or whatever else the buyer wants — as long as it does not involve profanity, the Charleston Daily Mail reported.

The buyer must also pay for the tattoo unless the bidding goes above $5,000.

I attempted to find Burns’ ad on eBay but wasn’t able to locate it. However, I did find another advertisement for tattoo ad space:

I’m a 19 year old male. Im 6′ tall and 170 lbs and I am selling my upper arms lower legs or back or possibly my neck for tattoo advertising space for college. I live in St. Louis Missouri and would consider looking over local tattoo artists to be used. This is a great opportunity to advertise your company or corporation. Please make a reasonable bid nothing rediculously low.

You can view that eBay auction here while it lasts. This fellow sadly started his auction at just ninety-nine cents…I hope his bid goes over a couple of bucks.

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Worldy Chatter

Like them or hate them, tattoos in Kanji or Chinese characters are still a popular trend among non-Asian tattoo aficionados. There is a whole lot of trust that goes in to having someone tattoo a character whose meaning you gleaned off of the Internet or perhaps off of some blurry printout on the wall of the tattoo studio. And for every trusting person out there, there’s someone who is willing to take advantage.

Zug.com is an admittedly hilarious humor website that described a cruel prank played by one of Zug’s contributors on his coworker. The coworker noticed that many people, including his obviously caucasian coworker, had a Chinese character for a tattoo. In his own words:

So I got an idea. I started by talking to the delivery guy from the Chinese take-out near my office. I made up a few fake Chinese phrases from words I saw in a Chinese newspaper, and started throwing them out at him. Now, I have no idea how to speak Chinese. I couldn’t figure out how to pronounce the stuff I had, or how to make sentences out of it, or what dialect it was, but none of that really mattered. What mattered was having the proper Charlie Chan accent and loud, confident delivery.

Eventually his coworkers believed that he spoke some Chinese. And then he began working on the target of his prank.

He greeted his tattooed coworker in his fake Chinese dialect. As he guessed, she didn’t understand a word he said.

You don’t speak Chinese?” I ask.

So I launch into the questions: what made her decide on a Chinese symbol, who was the artist, were they Chinese, everything except what the symbol stood for. She stammers through the answers, which boil down to no real reason for the Chinese, no real interest in Asian culture or language, just got the tat from some white American dude in a shop in Sayerville. Then she launches into an explanation of what it means: inner peace or some nonsense.

And then, the punchline:

“No,” he tells her, “it says ‘hao fu,’ which means bean curd.”

To really finesse the prank, he had even doctored up a Chinese take-out menu to include her “bean curd” character.

A cruel joke? Surely. The coworker got upset, cried, and was understandably quite angry. The coworkers unwittingly played a role in the prank as they assured her that he did appear to speak Chinese quite well. Eventually his guilt got the best of him and the truth came out.

Did that stop the folks at Zug.com from taking the prank another step further? Of course not. They dedicated an entire website to providing fake tattoo flash for unsuspecting Internet surfers.

Fake Free Kanji Flash Site

While I laughed a bit when I read the article, I don’t condone anything that Zug.com did. However, there is an important lesson to learn here: anyone getting any Chinese or Kanji tattoo should check their sources if Chinese or Japanese is not their native language. There are people out there who think that your permanent “Bean Curd” tattoo is good for their momentary laugh.

For the record, your author has a Kanji tattoo which she hopes means “Soulmate.”

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Who doesn’t love Vans?

According to the Huddersfield Daily Examiner (UK), Easy Computers Limited ran an April Fool’s Day website campaign offering £5,000 for anyone who would be willing to have the company’s Laptops Direct brand tattooed onto their foreheads. They weren’t prepared for the response they received from customers who were willing to turn their bodies into billboards.

Managing director Nick Glynne said: “We didn’t expect anyone to take it seriously, but hilariously – and worryingly – we had over 100 replies from customers wanting to be branded with our logo!”

The spoof video advertising the prank quickly became one of the UK’s most watched videos. You can see it here:

The video is quite well done, and gives no hint of illegitimacy, which may be why the response was so great. That, and the amounts at stake were apparently high enough to be quite tempting to some.

The fake advertisement offered people £5,000 to have the logo tattooed on their forehead, £1,000 for a tattoo on arms or legs and £500 for a tattoo on shoulders or back.

A “press release” quoted Mr Glynne saying: “It is a competitive market out there and it’s getting harder and more expensive to find creative ways of promoting our brand.

“One customer actually drove 80 miles to our Huddersfield headquarters demanding £5,000 to have his forehead tattooed there and then!”

£5,000 is a lot of money. But a forehead tattoo is forever.

Readers - can you put an ad price on your own forehead? What about a leg or an arm or something that’s more concealable?

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Gwen. ‘Nuff Said.

“Hell yeah, it hurts!”

Tattoos are painful. Anyone who says they aren’t was probably drunk when they got their ink. Those with high pain thresholds may describe the feelings as more akin to a scratch on a sunburn, but at the very least there is definitely a certain amount of discomfort associated with getting a tattoo.

This is always a fun conversation over a few drinks on a Friday night: whose tattoo hurt the most? Anyone with more than one tattoo probably has a tattoo “war story,” but is there any objective agreement on what tattoos hurt the most? Certainly everyone acknowledges that different people experience pain differently, but can’t we all agree that some places just hurt far more than others?

Fleshy spots like the thigh and the upper arm are probably safe spots for those who are afraid of a little pain. Bony areas are the ones that really bring the pain.

But what hurts the most? Is it the foot? The ankle? There is so little fat in these areas that the pain just has to be high.

How about the upper chest? The ribs? Again, these bony areas are among the worst as far as pain goes.

What about the hip?

One heavily tattooed tattoo artist I spoke to said that the tattoo on his head was by far the most painful.

Few people can confirm this, but the eyeball tattoo just has to be painful, and if it isn’t, at the very least it ranks high in the “ick” factor.

Readers - what was your most painful tattoo? Why do you think it was so bad?

Eyeball tattooing - not a tattoo of an eyeball on skin, but a tattoo on the eyeball itself. Sound painful? For most people, that very thought is the stuff that nightmares are made of, but for Pauly Unstoppable, a Canadian body modification fanatic, it became a reality. Unstoppable is no stranger to unusual and extreme body modifications, but this eyeball tattoo is thought to be the first of its kind.

Over forty needle insertions were needed to add the blue hue to the white of his eyeball. UK’s tabloid, The Sun, featured pictures of the procedure in progress. Unstoppable appeared to have utmost faith in the procedure. “The procedure was extensively researched and done by people who were aware of the risks and possible complications and that it should not be casually attempted. “Now that this experiment has been started, please wait for us to either heal or go blind before trying it.”

The race for the most extreme body modification seems to know no limits. Unstoppable’s website features a huge list of tattoos, piercing, stretching, scarification and implants, some of which are downright cringeworthy, as well as a beautifully simple explanation of why he does what he does. So far the website hasn’t been updated to include the eyeball tattoos, but it does have a long list of future planned modifications, so the website, like Unstoppable, appears to be a work in progress.

To read more about the eyeball tattoo procedure, and to see more pictures, visit The Sun’s website.

For more about Pauly Unstoppable, including his photo gallery and modification list, click here.

Sometimes those tattoos just don’t turn out quite as nice as we had hoped. And sometimes, something that sounded like a great idea on a Saturday night after a round of drinks doesn’t look so pretty on Monday morning. But the beauty of tattoos is that they are there, for better or worse, for a long time. And sometimes it seems like some ink just exists to set an example of what NOT to do.

WNOR FM99 is sponsoring a bad tattoo contest, and their website has pictures of the worst offenders so you can cast your vote. Even if the station isn’t in your listening area, the website is definitely worth a click because there are quite a few tattoos pictured that make you hope that both the artist and the tattooed were quite drunk at the time. The votes will be counted and the winners will get gift certificates to a tattoo shop - assuming that their horrifying ink hasn’t frightened them away from tattoos permanently.

Want to see a few of the highlights? Of course you do.

I think that one is pasta. Sitting underneath a house:

There has to be a story behind this one. Does anyone recognize that face? Or that butt?:

Kids shouldn’t use tattoo guns. Neither should some adults:

Is that an extra…leg? What IS that thing?

Does that say “pump ass” or “dump ass?” I can’t decide which would be worse.:

The ladies like my peniswrench:

It’s a…jellyfish? Curtain? Space invader?:

This is just a small sample of the wall of shame that is posted on the radio station’s website. There are plenty more on the station’s website, too! So cast your votes, and go thank your tattoo artist for doing a great job on your tattoo.