Tattoo parlors must shift with tattoo culture and welcome a new age of women
Women are no strangers to pain. Many undergo strenuous childbirth, gut-wrenching periods, the shards of the glass ceiling impaling their backs as patriarchal systems sever their ability to thrive in modern society while simultaneously being told that those systems don’t exist, and eyebrow plucking. Women have proven themselves to be tough time and time again, yet modern day tattoo parlors tend to avoid the contemporary revolution of inclusive tattooing and continue abide by the incredibly masculine centered historical notions of the art. Parlors oftentimes maintain a dark aesthetic, with a lot of beards and a lot of images of skulls. While it is an absolute truth that many, many women like dark things, skulls, and may even have beards of their very own, the environments of a lot of tattoo parlors are not incredibly welcoming to women (and yes, even in Fort Collins) and have a bad history of not being super cool to them, especially women who gravitate towards being more traditionally feminine. Which, to put it simply, is bullshit.
There should be more tattoo places where you can bring your mom.
In recent years in the U.S., for the first time in history, far more women are getting tattoos than men. The recent popularity of tiny, simple tattoos has opened up the tattoo world for women. Of course, these are not the only kinds of tattoos that women are getting today. Many women embrace the aesthetic of having extensive ink all over their bodies, but not without enduring ridicule for adopting an “unladylike” appearance. The rise of tiny tattoos gives women the opportunity to participate in tattoo culture while still mostly maintaining society’s idealisms and expectations around what is socially acceptable for women (and by socially acceptable I mean attractive in an extremely heterosexual sense). Instead of getting a dragon across her chest, it is more acceptable for a woman to get a tiny infinity sign on her side-boob. Not every woman wants to deal with the ridicule and over-sexualization that comes with large, visible tattoos, and that is okay. They shouldn’t have to, and there are other tattooed women out there breaking the boundaries of modern social norms. Essentially, tiny tattoos give women a chance to have tattoos and get the least amount of sexist bullshit for it. But what sucks now is, many tattoo artists won’t tattoo these kinds of tattoos or take clients who want them seriously.
In my freshmen year of college at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO, a girl living in my dorm got her first tattoo a day after I endured receiving my two-foot-long thigh piece. She found mine to be so beautiful, it gave her the confidence to go out and get something she wanted ever since she was little: a tiny wave on her hip to keep home close when she was feeling especially homesick or landlocked. She left the dorms on top of the world, panicking profusely but still on top of the world, but came back in tears. The tattoo turned out exactly how she dreamt it, but the experience of actually getting the tattoo proved more traumatic than the hot needle going into her skin. The artist, annoyed by her simple request and tattoo-virgin nervousness, made fun of her and berated her during her entire appointment about not staying still and made no attempt to comfort her. She never plans on getting another tattoo.
Essentially, women are bound to a paradox: Their tattoos are either too radical for society or too basic for artists to take them seriously, virtually leaving them out of tattoo culture.
So, besides this paradoxical situation being plainly unfair, why does it matter so much that women are being included in tattoo culture? The simple answer is: agency.
Tattoos give women an outlet of control over their body that has never been provided to them. Recently, women across the country have utilized the progressively terrifying political climate as inspiration for their body ink. Thousands of women now bare “Nasty Women” or “Nevertheless, she persisted” tattoos after the Women’s March in January. While these kinds of tattoos are great examples of more overt resistance, women have been tattooing their bodies for decades as a way to actively display ownership over their bodies in the face of dictation.
Despite many perceived notions that tattooing in the United States is strictly a masculine concept, beginning with sailors and prison inmates, tattoos and women have been together for a while. In the 19th century, Victorian women used tattooing as a way to challenge problematic ideas of purity. According to Margot Mifflin, a professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York who wrote book called Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, the emergence of women getting tattooed during the second wave feminist movement and the sexual revolution of the 60’s and 70’s directly correlated with public politicization of women’s bodies during this time with topics like abortion rights, female birth control and sexual harassment. In the 1990’s, women began tattooing over their mastectomy scars from breast cancer operations.
Some people will argue tiny tattoos are bad for the art itself due to their simplicity and cookie-cutter tendencies, or that it somehow harms the purity of tattooing, but that, too, is total bullshit. Good tattoo artists try to make every work their best work and their own work, even if it is the ten thousandth “Live. Laugh. Love.” tattoo they have had to do in the past month. Unfortunately for the artists partaking in small, cliche tattoo-shaming that leads to the alienation of women from participating in tattooing combined with a weird, gross culture of men thinking they have to power to decide whether or not women should get tattoos or not based on how it impacts their attractiveness, this kind of mentality will only encourage the emergence and impending success of all women-run tattoo shops.
Not only are all-women run tattoo shops badass because they create a welcoming environment for women where they can get the tattoos they want and not feel objectified or belittled for their choices, but also because women tattoo artists are breaking in to a largely male-dominated field. Currently, 1 in 6 tattooers are female, but this statistic, correlating with the current radical upheaval of the current fourth wave of feminism, is bound to increase and enlarge in correlation with the demand of women wanting tattoos. So, until I can comfortably bring my mom into any tattoo shop I want so she can get the cute little butterfly on her shoulder she has been wanting, tattoo shops like Jackalop Tattoo in Minneapolis, MN and Modern Medium Tattoo Studio in Fort Collins, CO that strive to accommodate inclusive, comfortable tattoo culture can have all my money.
