Trend Highlight: Tattoos

I’ve wanted this particular shape, it’s a double cross, since 11th grade...I decided to get it on the one year anniversary of my break-up, which was really devastating for me and took me a long time to get over. [Getting a tattoo] was about reclaiming myself, my independence and my strength, so I did a little bit more research on it before 100% committing to it. Not only was it a symbol of Joan of Arc, but it was also used to denote war heros in the middle ages, and it was used by the French Resistance in World War 2. So, a combination of all three of those things bring together courage, strength and resistance, and I thought that was really meaningful and empowering to me. It was very important to me to use it as a way to reclaim myself, and my independence and strength and help me move forward. - Anonymous

The pomegranate one is my more recent tattoo, and it has all to do with the Persephone myth. When different people tell that story, they tell it differently—sometimes Persephone is in love with Hades and that’s why she goes to the underworld, and sometimes he kidnaps her. It made me think about the subjectivity of our personal narratives, and when people tell the story of my life, I want to have a say in it. I want to have it be my story.

The mountains on my side are from the best weekend of my life. My senior year of high school, my grandma got diagnosed with lung cancer and so for the next summer, we scheduled a weekend at this lodge in Montana. We invited all of her close friends from throughout her life--there were 46 rooms available and exactly 46 people she invited to invite, so it was already magical. Everyone loved each other and we had a wonderful time. [My grandma] was sitting on this lawn with a beautiful lake and mountains all around. She was looking up at the sky, and started crying. Everyone asked what was wrong, and she said that she was fine, she just saw an eagle. Her best friend who had died ten years before always had an eagle as her spirit animal. My grandma said, “For this celebration of my life, everyone I love is here, even the people who have passed.” It was the best, most loving experience of my life and I want to keep it with me forever. - Jamieson Werling

This tattoo was done by one of my best friends from high school, and that group of people I consider to be an extension of my family. [My best friend] over fall semester learned how to do stick and pokes, and as soon as we got home to her basement I wanted one. She has a background in illustration and in drawing, and drew me a quick lavender branch sketch because she knew I like botanicals. And I was like, “Great, put it on me forever.”

I kind of think that the tattoo itself being a lavender branch is great, I love the design and how it looks. But it’s more about having the tie with that group of people, always. Every time I see it now I think about them. - Lindsey Weiss

[The design is a sunflower that her sister drew.] My sister had a very hard battle with depression, which created a big rift in our relationship in high school. But I would say my journey with my own mental health has been closely wrapped with hers.  

Why I chose the sunflower: I found out once that sunflowers don’t face the sun because they follow the light. Instead, the side of the stalk in shadow grows faster than the side of the stalk in sunlight, causing the flower to bend toward the sun. I thought that was a really beautiful metaphor for growth from darkness. - Pauline Moll

My best friend and I have been best friends since the 7th grade. Our friendship is the type that I know it’s permanent because it’s gone through so many rough patches and we still come out as best friends. Over winter break, we were like “let’s get matching tattoos,” just so we would always have a little part of each other with us. We got the number 7 because first of all, it’s lucky. We’ve been best friends since 7th grade, and our graduation year was 14 so 7+7. We always played lacrosse and we flourished as co-captains, and my number was 14 and hers was 28, both divisible by 7. We thought that it was a nice reminder that we will always be with each other and we are so lucky to have each other in our lives, our friendship is lucky, and we can conquer the world. It’s also a nice thing to do when we’re young, and we’ll look back on it when we’re 80 and be like, “remember when there used to be a 7 on our ankles and now it’s just this blob?” - Kimberly McBride

I like the ankle spot because as a dancer, it’s one of the things you present, but it’s easily hidden from plain view, which is something I liked.

I mainly decided on the design of a fox because, for me at least, the fox is super important—it reminds me of my childhood and Aesop’s fables. The fox is always cunning and always gets something done, yet it means so many different things in the different fables, which is so interesting to me. It also had the double meaning of the Japanese kitsune, and a reminder of my heritage. It’s something that I discovered leaving a centralized white area of home and coming to a more diverse place: that my heritage is a huge part of me and not something that can be whitewashed. That was the impetus for me to just go and [get the tattoo done.] - Drew Tanabe

I wanted the ampersand symbol to represent that if there's an and, there's always something else coming, and whatever is happening right now, there's always something next For the three circles tattoo, each circle represents the three places I've called home: Chicago/London/Ohio. - Vatsala Kumar

I got this tattoo on June 7th of this year. I got it on the one year anniversary of my sexual assault. I wanted to get my third tattoo that had something to do with reclamation of my body and my space and my domain. So I was looking stuff up online and came across Lady Gaga, who was at the Oscars a few years ago for the documentary The Hunting Ground, which is about sexual assault on college campuses, and she performed the song “Til It Happens To You.” She performed with a large group of other survivors, and she herself is a survivor. One of the men onstage designed a tattoo for her that was an infinity sign with a white rose, which is her favorite flower, coming out of the top  of fire, so kind of like the rebirth from the ashes from the white rose. So she went and got it with this guy, and a handful of other survivors who performed with her also went and got the same tattoo. Women across the country have been getting this tattoo as like a mark of solidarity with the survivor community, so I decided that’s what I wanted to do. - Lucy Godinez

The thing about tattoos is each design does mean something to me, but I don't ascribe any ceremonious meaning to them, really, and I kind of get them on a whim. But general meaning of all of them are women's empowerment and things relating to gender politics.

Especially with the apple, the apple something that represents female empowerment without being too obvious. I got the apple thinking of the imagery of the original sin, a story that's been used to vilify women since the beginning of time, and tried to repurpose the image of the apple to represent the first time that woman chose free will, knowledge, and autonomy . - Annie Brennen

Photo Credit: Mari Uchida