Once a marker of rebellion, visible ink is now a widely accepted form of self-expression.
From the tiny envelope inked on my nape to the tube of lipstick above my right ankle, I have 15 tattoos in total. At least, I’m pretty sure I do. I’m starting to lose count. As a writer, I blame my body art obsession on my natural inclination to tell stories. When something interesting happens, I use it as the inspiration for a pitch…and then for a tattoo.
I teamed up with my childhood best friend to get my first one: To celebrate our eighteenth birthdays, we each got one side of a set of curly brackets (I got the left side, and she got the right). The day after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, I walked the two blocks to my neighborhood parlor and asked for the letters “G-R-R-R-L” on the back of my left upper arm, eager to express my womanly rage. And though I loathed growing up in the South at the time, my most recent ink of peaches is an homage to my home state of Georgia. (You know what absence does.)
This story is from the May 2019 edition of ELLE.
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This story is from the May 2019 edition of ELLE.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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