Tattoos- A Path to Regaining Bodily Autonomy
Pam Nash showing off her body art at the Bristol Tattoo Club
“Well look at what you’re wearing, you were asking for it!” I was fifteen and had just gotten off of work at an Italian restaurant. I was wearing jeans, a black button down shirt, and a distinct smell of garlic. I wasn’t “asking” for anything except for my assaulter to stop when I began to get uncomfortable. He didn’t and I was able to throw him off of me after a struggle, but he immediately blamed me when I called him out. This would be the first time I felt I wasn’t in control of my own body.
Looking back on that moment ten years later, I wonder if I could have done anything differently. Sure, I could have never struck up a friendship with him, gone to his house, allowed him to kiss me that first time. But I also realize there is nothing I could have done differently, because as a teenage girl, he felt he could do whatever he wanted to my body whether I gave permission or not. From that day on, I never allowed a man to control my body in a way I didn’t consent to again, until one did.
Before I get ahead of myself, I should explain that I am pretty heavily tattooed. I got my first tattoo the week I turned eighteen and haven’t looked back. I loved being able to choose something meaningful or even just decorative and have it put on my body as a visual reminder of a time or feeling in my life. In college when I was offered the opportunity to do nude tattoo modeling I jumped at the chance. The money was nice and paid for my drinks and more tattoos, but more than that, it gave me the opportunity to present my body in a way that I had chosen. I was able to control the male gaze while presenting the art I had gotten for myself and no one else. I was strong, I was powerful, I could handle pain. It was around this time that I met the man that would break down that sense of self, no matter how much ink I had in my skin.
Cory* was a dark and brooding man with lots of emotional baggage, someone (I thought) just like myself. After an emotionally abusive, tumultuous, on and off relationship through college we stupidly decided it would be a good idea to move from New York to a small town in Michigan, get a house, and try to lay the groundwork to start a business and our life together. Obviously that didn’t pan out. I was depressed and isolated, his alcoholism spiraled out of control. After less than a year I found myself looking for jobs back in New York. In my mind he would follow me back in a few months while in his mind I would come back to him. We decided to try long distance dating and I packed my bags, kissed him goodbye, and headed towards my real home. I immediately got a well paying job in my chosen field, found an apartment, and was thriving. When Cory* came to visit for my birthday I couldn’t wait to see him and show him how well I was doing. Instead he took me out to an expensive dinner, made me pay for it, then told me he cheated on me basically as soon as I left. What would follow would be a year of screaming matches, threats, and a trip back to Michigan to retrieve my deceased father’s things he was threatening to throw out after my mom had a house fire and was left with nothing. Through it all I continued to get tattooed and realize that I was better off without him.
Things had finally settled down and I met my partner Tim. We fell deeply in love very quickly and I was shown how I deserved to be treated all along. After about 8 months of being together exclusively, I got out of the shower and discovered a strange bump on my labia. I quickly ran down a list of my sexual partners with whom I hadn’t used protection (only Cory*). I had a panic attack, made Tim look at it, and after a sleepless night woke up early to begin frantically calling Planned Parenthood. Thankfully I was able to get an appointment right away. I was told it was either HPV or herpes but they wouldn’t be able to tell until the test came back. I promptly burst into tears. I wasn’t angry about the STI, as both are common and treatable. According to Women’s Health Magazine “It is estimated that as many as 75 percent of the reproductive-age population has been infected with one or more types of genital HPV and up to 5.5 million new infections occur each year. The good news: In the vast majority of cases, the virus causes no symptoms or health problems.” Herpes is a little more serious, but still something that is easily dealt with through medicine and does not deserve the stigma it has. What I was angry about was that once again, I had lost my bodily autonomy to a man.
As Women’s Health had mentioned, the majority of women affected by HPV have no symptoms or health problems. That was not the case with me. I went through week after week of freezings and acid burnings, trying creams that gave me chemical burns, changing my diet, trying anything I read about that may help, but nevertheless the symptoms persisted. I had no control over my body and I fell in to a deep depression. I felt as though all of the years of hard work I had put into reclaiming my body were derailed, and I couldn’t even blame myself. People tried to tell me HPV is transmittable in a variety of ways, but even if Cory* had not given it to me, another man had. I went from feeling confident and sexy to an anxiety riddled mess. The problem with HPV is that stress worsens the symptoms, but how could I not be stressed about losing all of my feminine power?
About two months into the eight months it took for the symptoms to finally go away, I was contacted by a tattoo artist about getting a free back piece. This wasn’t going to be some frilly little lower back piece of a butterfly with an infinity symbol, it would be a peacock, an ancient symbol of protection covering from my upper thighs to my shoulders. I hadn’t even chosen the image as I was getting it for free, but as soon as the artist told me what type of bird it would be I knew this tattoo had a special meaning, similar to Yantra tattoo. According to Lars Krutak, author of Spiritual Skin: Magical Tattoos and Scarification, Yantra tattoos believed to offer protection and other benefits have been recorded everywhere throughout both mainland Southeast Asia and as far south as Indonesia and the Philippines. As someone who had been getting tattooed for years, I took pride in knowing about the history of tattoos as more than just decorative art. While I wouldn’t be getting be tattooed by magic practitioners or Buddhist monks with a sharpened metal rod, I felt the process would still be transformative.
The minute the needle first touched my skin I instantly felt a little better. I had just committed to a massive undertaking, filled with hours and hours of pain followed by days of discomfort, yet I couldn’t help smiling. As the ink sank deeper into my skin, I felt a sense of calm. I had made this important decision about my body on my own. I was autonomous.