People are always out to make a mark in the world. More and more often, they’re choosing to make that mark on their own skin.
Once something solely done by sailors and soldiers, the tattoo is fast becoming a common and personal art form among people in all professions and of all ages.
“Now you barely see anyone between 20 and 40 who doesn’t have a tattoo,” said Langley resident and tattoo aficionado Heather Conrad. “Back when I started it was about fashion and to be shocking, but now it’s so mainstream.”
Tattoos are defined as “a permanent mark or design made on the skin by a process of pricking and ingraining an indelible pigment” in the dermis layer of skin, which doesn’t change much over a person’s lifetime. They are an art form as old as any done by mankind. Archaeologists have discovered tattooing tools more than 12,000 years old, and from time to time an ancient mummy turns up with inked designs on its skin.
Geographically, South Whidbey is in a tattoo hot zone, which means it’s easy find a tattoo in almost any crowd of people — from lawyers to grocery store clerks, and rock band members to writers.
“On the West Coast many more people are getting tattooed, and it tends to shift more toward women,” said Coupeville dermatologist Russ Johnson. “It used to be only military men got them, but now mothers, business professionals, grandmothers, everyone, is getting them.”
Megan Gibbard, 23, grew up on South Whidbey but now lives in Seattle, visiting to work at the South Whidbey Tilth Farmer’s Market. On summer days she puts on a tank top and proudly displays her shoulders, including a fist-sized tattoo on her left upper arm.
The picture of three laurels in a circle, surrounded by flames is Gibbard’s second tattoo of two. And it’s the better one.
She got for her first tattoo, a fish with stars and bubbles done just above her navel, when she was 17 — one year shy of the legal age.
“I went to a place in Seattle where they didn’t ask for your I.D.,” she said.
Thought went into the selection of her first tattoo, but it was guided by more than just an appreciation of the art.
“The tattoo comes from a story I heard from a person I was smitten with, and he designed it,” she said.
She went for her second inking after high school. That time, she made sure the tattoo was linked to her personal interests. The laurels came from a Goddess book she’d been reading. She later had the flames placed around the laurels.
Tattoo artist Megan Bussart at the Bellingham shop Camden Chameleon inked the laurels.
“I really liked the fact that a woman did the work, considering where it came from,” Gibbard said.
The illustrated woman
Langley resident Terri Piatanesi, 35, is addicted to tattoos. She has so many she’s lost count.
“I can’t really say because they so blend together, some are add-ons –there’s just so many,” she said.
A boyfriend bought Piatanesi her first tattoo in 1989, a small swallow on the back of her leg. Within six months she added Vietnamese characters meaning “wisdom” to the design.
She has yet to stop. Among her uncountables are the swallow, tribal designs, a raven, an iris, a “devil chick,” an astrological key, ivy, a dragon, a fairy, Wiccan symbols, as well as Eyeore, Tigger, Rabbit, Pooh and Piglet.
While the selections may seem random, Piatanesi said she usually mulls a tattoo idea over for a couple of months and consults a trunk full of tattoo magazines. She estimates she probably has about 25 hours of work on her body, worth about $3,000.
“There are times that I forget I have tattoos and people will stare at me and it’s not a nice kind of stare,” she said. “The perception of people with tattoos is sometimes bad, even if it has gone mainstream.”
“I think they enhance me and make me a piece of walking art,” she said.
Tattoo evolution
Heather Conrad’s five tattoo choices have followed the 37-year-old from her punk rock adolescence into motherhood.
A roommate with a tattoo gun gave Conrad her first tattoo, a skull with bat wings and a spider web on her upper arm, when she was 23.
“It’s my punk rock stamp,” she said.
Although amateur tattoos, according to dermatologist Johnson, have greater opportunity to go awry, Conrad was happy with her results.
“It was a pretty simple design. For the time being it was fine, and I don’t hate it now. I just think that I’ve grown out of it,” she said.
Her most recent tattoo was added to her other arm. It is a circular design on modeled after a vintage Halloween image of a black cat and a crescent moon.
“I’ve changed and matured with age,” she said. “Now I try to put more meaning behind my tattoos.”
And while some people dare to ink boyfriends’ and girlfriends’ names into their flesh, Conrad is planning a gem of a tattoo as a tribute to her newborn daughter, Ruby.
“I plan to incorporate a Ruby into a design I’m already working on,” she said.
It’s the evolution of a tattoo consumer, from punk rocker to mom.
“They’re addictive unless you have a bad experience, and you end up wanting more and to commemorate things in your life,” she said.
Tattoo health talk
Thinking about tattoos as a life decision is important. From a dermatologist’s perspective, Russ Johnson says the people most likely wanting to remove a tattoo are those who have an obscene tattoo in a visible place, or those who have the name of a former mate on their skin.
Johnson has past experience performing tattoo removal, but does not perform the treatment in his Coupeville offices.
“Not too many people ask for it,” he said. “In this area most people getting tattoos really like the ones they have because people are getting wiser with the tattoos they get.”
“Often times people aren’t motivated to get a tattoo removed unless there’s a new boyfriend or girlfriend telling them ‘you better get her name off you or else'”
Tattoo removal is more complex than it sounds. It takes several types of lasers for the different tattoo pigments, and multiple treatments to fade a tattoo. There is no complete removal, Johnson said, as on average a tattoo is diminished by only 90 percent.
Johnson said the cost of a laser tattoo removal depends on the size of a tattoo, the pigments used, and the doctor performing the procedure. On average, he said a black or blue tattoo — the colors the easiest to remove — the size of a couple square inches would require three to four treatments costing about $400 each.
Terri Piatanesi advises people to wait until they are 18 to get a tattoo.
“You make better decisions then,” she said.
In Washington, it is now a misdemeanor for any artist who tattoos anyone under the age of 18.
The biggest issue in tattooing is cleanliness, said Johnson. Going to a shop that does not use clean needles is inviting infection with Hepatitis C or B.
Most shops break needles after they’ve been used to prove they won’t be used again. If a shop does re-use needles, Johnson advises finding out if it uses medical grade sterilization tools.
Piatanesi recommends going to a shop that is a member of the National Tattoo Association.
With all the hard choices to make, and the fact tattoos will most likely sag in old age, why do people get tattoos?
“Every young generation wants to push the envelope in their own way,” said tattoo newcomer Gibbard. “Decades ago people could have done it with hairstyles, but things are different and they’re rebelling in different ways, including tattoos.”
