“I just don’t want you to look like a les­bian,” said my hus­band as I revealed to him that I was think­ing about get­ting another tat­too. “You know…butch. I don’t want you to look like that.”

I reas­sured him that the tat­too I had in mind would not decrease my thin sup­ply of fem­i­nin­ity nor increase a man­li­ness about me. “I want a pretty and frilly tat­too. Not a cobra or a dragon,” I said to Jerry.

That was a few years and a few tat­toos ago. At some point in the mar­riage, Jerry accepted that I liked tat­toos and that I had become skill­ful in pick­ing good artists and devel­op­ing taste­ful, artis­tic con­cepts. Not a sin­gle time has he looked at any of my skin art  and said, “Yuk. Take it back.”

Our mar­riage has a long his­tory of tat­too art. When Jerry pro­posed to me, I was a young twenty-​​something liv­ing in the exotic port city of Hong Kong. Jerry and I were both full time vol­un­teers with an out­fit called Youth With a Mis­sion. As our wed­ding day approached, I began to fret about the stick ‘n poke tat­tooed ini­tials of a high school boyfriend on my lower leg. The boyfriend was long gone, but the tat­too stared up at me every­day.  When he first offered to tat­too his ini­tials on my leg I took it as a sign of true love. But months later when our puppy love romance fiz­zled out, the tat­too began to look more like I had  been branded like a cow. I hated it. And now, years later, I was on the thresh­old of my wed­ding day with the  man who would be my part­ner for life.

“I want to go to Wan­chai and get this cov­ered up with a rose,” I con­fessed to Jerry one evening. He had assured me that the tat­too didn’t bother him,  but I pressed the point because it both­ered me.  And so, one sul­try Hong Kong night, we headed down to where the sailors like to go and found Ricky’s Tat­too Par­lor who adver­tised with a  hand-​​painted sign, We spe­cial­ize mis­fit tat­too.   I took that to mean fix­ing mis­fit tat­toos. Not cre­at­ing them!

And so, one of the first deci­sions we made together that con­cerned my body went fairly smoothly. But as the early years of mar­i­tal bliss evolved into decades, my desire for for tat­too  art increased.

I began to get small tat­toos – always in con­sul­ta­tion with Jerry for his bless­ing – hid­den on the lower part of my legs. It always felt a bit awk­ward talk­ing to him about it. Was I get­ting his approval first? What if he said No?  What if I didn’t talk to him about it at all? How does mar­riage part­ner­ship deal with body stuff? What if he wanted a nip­ple ring (ew!!) ? How far do we go with sov­er­eignty over our bod­ies in the mar­riage relationship?

We’ve been mar­ried twenty-​​four years. I  still don’t have defin­i­tive answers on this.  I can only tell you what’s worked for us and it’s this:  Mutual Respect.  I respect Jerry in that I con­sider his feel­ings and thoughts about tat­too art on my body.

After all, he will have to look at it for the dura­tion of our mar­riage and we are in it for life. I don’t want to put some­thing on my body that will turn him off or dis­gust him. How­ever, all of the tat­too images I like are  sim­ple and fem­i­nine. I like flow­ers, swirly plumes and stars and pais­leys and images of women. I have pretty tat­toos. When­ever I show him my lat­est addi­tion he always responds pos­i­tively. Like last year when Traci Man­ley of New Rose Tat­too fin­ished a large Japan­ese style flo­ral piece on my upper leg. “Wow, that’s amaz­ing!” he said and then won­dered if per­haps he might want to add a tat­too to his hum­ble col­lec­tion (he has two).

I am not the only tat­tooed Christ fol­low­ing woman with a hus­band who is under-​​inked or vir­gin skinned. My friend Donna is also a tat­too affi­cionado, while her hus­band Chuck decid­edly is not. They, too, have been mar­ried twenty-​​four years and have learned to nav­i­gate their part­ner­ship through the canyons and high­lands of the mar­riage jour­ney. Chuck, like Jerry, accepts that his wife likes to have tat­tooed skin. Our men honor us with their respect. They rec­og­nize that we own the house of our body. We share it with them in the mar­riage rela­tion­ship, but at the end of the day, each of us is  are in charge of the skin we walk around in.

I think most mar­riages get this. We don’t try to con­trol the other’s body func­tions or body health. We may encour­age one another – did you take your vit­a­mins, did you go to the doc­tor for that, wanna go work out with me?– but in a healthy, mutu­ally respect­ful part­ner­ship, we sub­mit our pref­er­ences to the other. I would love it if Jerry was heav­ily tat­tooed (with the kind of tat­toos I like!).  I enjoy an illus­trated human being to look at, and I look at him every­day. But Jerry is in charge of his body and he would pre­fer to only have a cou­ple tat­toos scat­tered around his frame. Do I get to tell him No, I want a tat­tooed hus­band. Go get inked. Now.  

Of course not. That would be ludi­crous. And why would it be ludicrous?

Because it’s Jerry’s body. Not mine.

And so, my body belongs to me. I get to decide how to dec­o­rate it. I may be mar­ried, but I am in charge of me and Jerry is in charge of him­self. We check in with each other out of pref­er­ence and mutual respect for one another.

“My boyfriend really wants me to get a tat­too?” said the young woman in line at the gro­cery store. Peo­ple often tell me their tat­too sto­ries when they see mine. “But I’m afraid of nee­dles. He says it will make me more sexy, but I don’t want to do it.”

“Then don’t do it,” I tell her. “It’s your body. Not his.”

She nods  and as I look at her, I see my 16-​​year old self sit­ting at that kitchen table with that guy Eddie who I let mark my body as his own.  “He doesn’t own your skin,” I add as she moves for­ward in line.

“I know. But it will make him happy if I do it. He’ll even pay for it,” she says as if this is a sell­ing point. “Maybe I’ll get a small one on my lower back. That’s what he really wants me to do. He even has it picked out for me.”

“I don’t know you, but I’m going to give you some advice any­way,” I told her with the bold­ness that only women in their for­ties can get away with among women in their twen­ties. “Never get a tat­too for some­one else. It has to be for you. What you want. What you like and what you can live with. It’s your body. You get to decide.”

I hope she sorted that out.  Rela­tion­ships and mar­riages are part­ner­ships and we each have to find our way in belong­ing together yet not own­ing the other.

This is one of the things about Chris­t­ian mar­riage : I was taught that my hus­band owned my body and that I owned his. This was based on the verse from I Corinthi­ans 7:4

 The wife does not have author­ity over her own body, but the hus­band does; and like­wise also the hus­band does not have author­ity over his own body, but the wife does.

I have heard many ref­er­ences to this over my church-​​drenched life being taught

that in the mar­riage rela­tion­ship, you give up rights to your  body. But here’s the rest of the passage:

It’s good for a man to have a wife, and for a woman to have a hus­band. Sex­ual dri­ves are strong, but mar­riage is strong enough to con­tain them and pro­vide for a bal­anced and ful­fill­ing sex­ual life in a world of sex­ual dis­or­der. The mar­riage bed must be a place of mutu­al­ity — the hus­band seek­ing to sat­isfy his wife, the wife seek­ing to sat­isfy her hus­band. Mar­riage is not a place to “stand up for your rights.” Mar­riage is a deci­sion to serve the other, whether in bed or out. (The Mes­sage)

Con­text is every­thing. The writer here is not telling us that your spouse has say-​​so over your body. The writer is advis­ing mar­ried cou­ples towards a part­ner­ship of mutu­al­ity and sex­ual unity. But through the fil­ter of Chris­tian­ized patri­archy, many women have been con­di­tioned to accept that what their man says Goes, that their hus­band has author­ity over their lives and even over their bod­ies. One can imag­ine how short the leap is to an abu­sive rela­tion­ship in a dys­func­tional, unhealthy mar­riage. A per­son with a con­trol­ling tem­pera­ment (or one who’s overly sub­mis­sive) can eas­ily take this mes­sage of giv­ing up the rights to your own body to a toxic place of dom­i­nance.  I do not believe that Paul, the writer of this pas­sage, had that in mind. The core mes­sage of the Chris­t­ian Gospel is Love One Another.  

Tat­tooed women are women who are pub­licly declar­ing sov­er­eignty over our bod­ies. Tat­toos are ter­ri­to­r­ial mark­ers : this is my skin. The hus­bands who love their tat­tooed women are men who respect that bound­ary. They are men like Chuck and Jerry. That kind of mutu­al­ity in a mar­riage is far more per­ma­nent than any tat­too will ever be.

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**Here’s the com­pan­ion arti­cle to this blog post, Tat­tooed Body and Soul