I got my first tat­too when I was 16 years old. Not in a tat­too shop. At a kitchen table by another teenager who used a sewing nee­dle and a bot­tle of black Indian ink. Thank God I didn’t get an infec­tion, but I did get a crappy tat­too that years later I would have cov­ered up by a real tat­too artist.

Under­neath all those swirls is a mis­fit tattoo

There’s a whole lot more to that tat­too story about ado­les­cence, trou­bled girl­hood and rogue boyfriends. For now, I’ll just say that get­ting a tat­too at 16 is not advised. Espe­cially at a kitchen table from some guy named Eddie.

Despite my rocky begin­ning with the art form of tat­too­ing, I quickly become a skin art lover. There was some­thing about dec­o­rat­ing the body with unique images that intrigued me. Tat­tooed skin was beau­ti­ful skin.  Breath­ing,  liv­ing, illus­trated can­vases of imagery that I found beau­ti­ful. It would be sev­eral more years before I finally got a real tat­too in a real tat­too shop by a real tat­too artist, one that I didn’t feel embar­rassed about, one that helped cover up the muck-​​up of kitchen table DIY tat­too art.  (so not recommended!)

More than a decade would have to pass before I ven­tured towards get­ting another tat­too piece. I always wanted more, but social con­ven­tion in the cir­cles I ran with frowned upon tat­toos of any kind, even pretty ones, espe­cially on women. They were  viewed as unseemly, uncomely, unlovely and…unladylike.  But like a piece of sparkly jew­elry a woman just has to have,  I began to get  tat­toos jew­el­ried on my body to enhance my body image. For my whole life to this very day, I have had a dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with by body. A very dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship.  I could write an entire book about the drama and trauma of being housed in this body and the things I have done to her  and she has done to me.

One of my best tat­toos is this pais­ley vine that runs along my right arm. Before too long, I’ll be get­ting more added to it for there is too much blank skin there beg­ging to be artified.

Tat­toos are illus­trated sto­ries and illus­trat­ing my body at all is a story in itself, for it is the story of how a curvy, pocked com­plex­ion female found a way to at least like her skin which in turn helped her like her­self a wee bit more. Super­fi­cial? Maybe, but it’s my story and it’s what I gotta own.

Tat­too­ing myself has def­i­nitely lent to the process of own­ing my body. This is my skin. I get to do with it what I want.  These are the scars I choose, beau­ti­ful, col­or­ful, swirling images of vibrant hues and del­i­cate lines. I didn’t want those other scars on my body. They came unbid­den. The scar on the wrist from a bad cut on the play­ground. The surgery scar from when I was four years old. The acne scars from my youth. The scar on my fin­ger from a cut­ting acci­dent.  All scars have stories. 

I know my trou­bled rela­tion­ship with my body is not unique. Just about every­body has some­thing that they don’t like about their phys­i­cal appear­ance or phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions.  Blog­ger and author Rachel Held Evans recently described why she didn’t want to exer­cise in pub­lic due to her body’s labored response:

Any­way, before sign­ing up for the Y, I had care­fully arranged my exer­cise rou­tine around main­tain­ing strict pri­vacy. I’d get on my creaky old tread­mill… in the basement.…put on my ear­phones, and spend some qual­ity alone-​​time with Flo­rence & The Machine. When friends invited me to run with them, I declined. When Dan asked me to join him in his morn­ing exer­cise rou­tine, I refused. I didn’t want any­one else smelling my sweat, or cri­tiquing my form, or keep­ing me account­able, or see­ing me jig­gle, or hear­ing me breathe like an over­heated rhi­noc­eros. Strug­gling is some­thing I pre­fer to do alone; vul­ner­a­bil­ity is an indi­vid­ual sport.  - Rachel Held Evans

I know about vul­ner­a­bil­ity. Emo­tional, spiritual.…but it is phys­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­ity that makes me the most anx­ious. And some­times just doing some­thing phys­i­cal – like an exer­cise class!– can bring up a heav­ing, puls­ing mass of body issues that lie in wait in the bones beneath my scarred up skin. There is a force of body shame that lies in wait to rise up like a Demen­tor from a Harry Pot­ter novel to suck the life out of my iden­tity. Such is the nature of the volatile rela­tion­ship I carry on with this meat sack known as My Body.

Art­ing up my skin has been a kind of elixir for my soul. It is my dec­la­ra­tion that I am more than flesh and bone and that I will own this body. It will not own me. Tat­toos are my badges of identity.

Tat­too by Aaron Goodrich of www​.newrose​tat​too​.com

Like my Beloved tat­too. A few years ago I decided I needed a gor­geous rose tat­too with a ban­ner blaz­ing  the tri­umphant cheer, Beloved. I had been going through a lot of pos­i­tive changes  dis­cov­er­ing that those who loved me superceded the self-​​hatred I am  prone to. My hus­band loves me. My chil­dren love me. My par­ents love me. My friends love me. My Cre­ator loves me. I strug­gle with lov­ing me, but nonethe­less I am a loved woman. I am Beloved.  I found a great artist from a shop here in Port­land to art it for me. It’s a great piece of imagery on my body, a means of  mark­ing my phys­i­cal ter­ri­tory from the Demen­tor of body shame. Does this cure my soul? No. Hav­ing Beloved tat­tooed on my body does not end the life­time bat­tle with self-​​loathing. But it is a vivid, daily reminder that I am loved with a no-​​matter-​​what kind of love.

I have often been mis­judged based on my appear­ance. Being a tat­tooed woman in Port­land is usu­ally not a big deal, since we are one of the top ten most tat­tooed cities in Amer­ica, yet still I often get mis­read just because I wear my sto­ries on my skin. Mindful of this, it is some­times pru­dent that I cover up in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions. Like job inter­views and fam­ily reunions where the older gen­er­a­tion  would pre­fer not to  have tat­tooed female rel­a­tives in the group photo.

Many of my friends have tat­toos. We cel­e­brate one another’s Tat­too Days with lun­cheons and lots of pho­tos. No cov­er­ing up here! My daugh­ter just got her first tat­too, some­thing I blogged about not too long ago.  I felt a surge of pride as the nee­dle pricked her skin and she did not so much as gri­mace. It was like a rit­ual as she in her own way was declar­ing own­er­ship over her 18– year old body.

Some­body once asked me, “Pam, when are you gonna stop get­ting tat­toos? Don’t you have enough?”

Well, I don’t know. I guess I’ll stop when the sto­ries stop com­ing or when my body stops try­ing to storify my phys­i­cal flaws as truths.  I sup­pose that day might not come til the other side. But if there’s tat­too art in  the here­after, well I guess you’ll know where to find me.

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** Here’s a link to the com­pan­ion arti­cle to this blog post, Tat­tooed Chris­t­ian Women and the Hus­bands Who Love Them

**Here’s a link to an old blog post about the story of my Cherry tat­too

Have any tat­toos? Any tat­too sto­ries? Body image con­fes­sions?  Let me hear ‘em! Link to pho­tos if you have any of your skin art you want to share. I’d love to see ‘em.