A tattoo is for life!

It’s going to be a long entry today, as I need to vent my spleen to the world! I need to get this out otherwise I’m going to be left dwelling and internalising this for far longer than I should! So here goes:

My niece Chloe came to visit us a few weeks back and I gasped in shock with what stood in front of me. It wasn’t a gasp of joy rather it was a gasp of “Chloe what the fuck have you gone and done to yourself!!!” I was shocked to see my beautiful Chloe. Instead of screaming at her I bit my tongue and hugged my adorable niece whilst plotting on how to kill my sister in law.

Chloe is a beautiful girl and I’m not just being biased, she is truly the most amazing young woman around with the most remarkable personality and I believe her to be highly, highly intelligent. Chloe is soon to turn 18 and on one hand she is wise, very wise beyond her years but on the other hand she is so child like and so immature. She is your typical Emo kid in appearance and acts very cool but scrape away at the exterior and you will be pleasantly shocked with what lies underneath.

So here I am describing my niece to you and I am sure you are asking yourself as to what Chloe has done that has me gasping in horror. You see Chloe is starting to cover her body with tattoos, piercings and ear expanders and at 17 I do not believe that she is ready nor is she mature enough to be treating her body, her temple, like this.

Now I am a liberal thinking woman and anyone who knows me knows that I am “down” with it all. I tend to not judge people and my attitude has always been and always will be - if what YOU do makes YOU happy and YOU aren’t harming anyone then mate do as you please. But when your 17 year old niece comes to visit showing you her ear expanders and tattoos it’s a shock to say the least. The piercings I have no real problem with but everything else was and is a shock!

My sister in law has allowed my niece to do what she wants when she wants and for that I want to strangle her. How can you allow a then 16 year old to start tattooing her body all over and be okay with it? My niece is moving to Melbourne in a few short months with the scope of getting into Melbourne University and studying to be a Psychiatrist. Not a Psychologist but a Psychiatrist.

Melbourne University Medical School is renown for being a “boys club”. So how on earth is my intelligent niece going to get into Medicine and then Psychiatry having two major disadvantages? Firstly being a woman and secondly covered in piercings and tattoos? I know she will get through her study and I know she will succeed but she is putting herself at a disadvantage and just asking for her teachers to single her out. Well that’s what I think anyway.

I am a 40 year old woman who has been contemplating getting a tattoo for the past 7 years yet have been fearful not of the pain but fearful of whatever I decide to get inked on my body is not for a day, not for a few months but for the remainder of my life. Why didn’t my sister in law warn my niece and maybe tell her to think about it before she agreed to Chloe tattooing herself and allowing my niece to jump in headfirst? Great parenting NOT!

I’m sure you must be thinking that I am going a bit overboard and my niece must have some tiny little tattoo on her wrist like all the other kids her age seem to have but I can assure you that when I say she is a 17 year old young woman who is covering her body with ink then believe what I am saying. Chloe wants to get her entire arm/sleeve done within the next 12 months and would one day soon like to look like the picture I have attached to this blog entry!

I’m worried about my niece and I don’t know how to tell her that her tattoos need to stop. Not stop completely or stop forever but stop for a few years at least. Or until she has completed her education. I treat Chloe as if she is my daughter and I guess that’s why I am so shocked with her all new body art. I do not believe that she is at an age where she is settled and sensible enough to make the right decisions for herself when it comes to tattoos. Don’t get me wrong I’m down with using your body as a canvas like art. I love the idea that you have a piece of art on you 24 hours a day 365 days a year for life, but I’m left questioning that when does body modification start to turn into self-mutilation? I think Chloe is self-mutilating and that is what deep down I am worried about.

Chloe is forever dying her hair every shade of the rainbow. One minute its long, then its shaved, then its pink, green, blue, black and so forth and I have no problem with that I don’t even have a problem with all her facial piercings as they look so feminine and pretty on her. Am I wrong in saying that hairstyles, hair colour and piercings are easer to undo compared to ear expanding and visible tattoos? If you had pink hair you could dye it back to a “normal” or “socially accepting” colour with in half an hour. Facial piercings are easy to take out and no one will be none the wiser but when you stretch your ear lobes out and look like an Amazonian Warrior that cant be rectified. You have permanently stretched your ear lobes out and there is no way on this earth that they are going to shrink back into place. Tattoos can be hidden, tattoos can be discreet and placed on body parts that aren’t exposed to your prospective employer, but when you are tattooed all over and are planning an entire arm sleeve and part of your neck then I think, depending on your career, it could turn out to be the biggest mistake of your life. Especially for a young woman wanting to get into medical school.

Chloe has taken her love of self-expression to an extreme and I think in the back of my mind that that is what has alarm bells going off in my head. She has really not thought this through before jumping into this. She has not thought about the consequences and I hate to say this I think that she is going to find life constantly knocking her back and challenging her and that’s what saddens me as this young woman has so much potential to succeed and make something of herself. Its almost like this has become a compulsion for Chloe, and that Chloe does all this body modification and tattooing to be in with the “cool crowd” and that’s where I think her immaturity lies.

From what I can comprehend my sister in law is not the nagging, demanding, mother so Chloe is not tattooing herself as an act of rebellion towards her parents. Its quite the opposite, her mother allows her to do what she wants, when she wants, how she wants and with whom she wants. She has no structure in her life and by the sounds of things she never has had any.

Chloe is moving in with us later this year and I have already warned her that there will be structure in our home, their will be curfews, there will be rules, there will be chores and I thought that I would be real and honest with her and express that our home is not always so “peaceful, tranquil and rosy”. I was trying to paint as real as a picture as I could and sort of wanting to forewarn her. Funnily enough her attitude has surprised me as Chloe tells me that that is what she wants.

I hope that having her move in with us will maybe have her reflect on her identity and her life psychology and hopefully put a hand brake on the tattooing for a little while at least. It’s coming across as if I am expecting her into conformity but I really am not. I just want her to THINK about what she is doing as a tattoo is for life!

DH

xoxo