One night in bed, I decided to stop saving tattoos on Instagram.
The more I saved, the more ads popped up, each adding to my fear that most tattoos are badly chosen and executed, as if all rules usually policing other artforms are demoted for the sake of personal style.
As I planned my new tattoo, I became more haunted by bodies decorated with weak symbolism, cringe fonts and poor shading. If I were nicer, other people’s tattoos wouldn’t give me the ick. But the more I saw, especially online, I realised that most tattoos are as ugly as anything from a souvenir shop. As visually pleasing as puzzles and postcards.
A bell curve appeared in front of me, correlating bad tattoos with people who don’t visit galleries, like nailing IKEA furniture into your home because that’s where your design zeitgeist begins and ends. It’s like setting your sense of style around H&M, a mimicry of fashion. And like the girls that love Talyor Swift for her lyrics, as the ultimate crossover between their selves and art, but it never crosses their mind to go to their bookshop and pick up some poetry for the same effect, if not better.
My cynicism didn’t negate tattoos’ millennia of cultural legacy or status as art. No – I was being rigid, fearing that art is best within professionalised barriers; artists and curators reject and scrap bad work and, as a viewer, I’m pretty assured only the good reaches me. But tattoos – lacking this formality – are a risky form of art with high potential for failure, dominated by personal intention and banal visions,
How could I know what looks good and where to find good artists if so many people fail to do so (judging by their tattoos)? I wished there was an intervening party– like curators scrutinising tattoo ideas and their tattooists to help us lift the bar. I felt conflicted, wishing I didn’t want more gatekeeping, but the tattoo culture on hand made me distrust self-will and crave more critique that’d leave me less vulnerable to the mediocre and embarrassing.
Saturday before our appointment, a friend and I went to a Japanese grocer near our station and plucked soju from the fridge. At her apartment, in her home clothes, I saw her tattoos for the first time. We had met in winter, so the only bare skin I’d seen before was on her face and hands. A polylinguist, her body was covered in large philosophical quotes in different languages. She said she got the most compliments on them when wearing dresses at weddings.
I told her about mine. A smiling strawberry I got on impulse at an art fair. Then the two tiny colourful flowers on my shoulder and pelvis by a Russian girl that I struggled to care for as I travelled while they healed. I told her my tattoos were whimsical and small enough to not be taken seriously. I went on: this is why I bought soju. I am going to get a tattoo of a soju bottle on Wednesday.
I’d also mentioned my tattoo on a call to my cousins that morning. They asked if it meant I loved soju. I said sure, but I only found out about it last year at a Korean BBQ with my sister. Then, a week later, I bought three soju bottles from an Asian grocer, which rolled around as I took the bus to my brother’s place, wanting to share them like a family secret. “Of course, I know what soju is,” he told me when I arrived. I was implying that this tattoo had a loose antidote, but wasn’t for self-expression – as if this lowered its chance for scrutiny and failure.
My cousin then mentioned she recently got her first tattoo, a flower, but someone said the centre looked like an eyeball. So, she’d booked a revision. “It’s good they told you right, so you know?” I said. She was quiet. I went on about how unfortunate a mutual’s tattoo placement was and she interjected, “As long as they’re happy, that’s all that matters.”
On the train to Lyon, I showed the artist’s Insta to my two travel companions – family visiting from Australia – but they had little reaction. I reminded myself of my notes so far: tattoos are a risk of intention, not shared pleasure. Mid-morning, we disembarked the train and I walked solo to the riverside studio, buying a lolly pop en route on the advice of my sister-in-law, who said it helped her when she had a dragon tattooed onto her back as well as a leaf on her wrist from a New Zealand trip that she now wanted to get removed.
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The sparse studio looked like it could be packed up in an hour. I told the receptionist in French that my French wasn’t perfect. She switched to English – with the tattooist sitting silently beside her – questioning why I asked for a 2cm tattoo on my booking when the perfect size was 2.4cm. “That’s fine, it was just a guess!” I said. I went to follow the tattooist motioning to another space, but the receptionist stopped me: “Why do you live here if you can’t speak French?”
I blinked, silent. I hadn’t said I couldn’t.
The tattooist placed the stencil on my bicep. I went between languages, telling him, no, faire du gym cinq jours par semaine, it’ll stretch! He’d move the stencil, and I’d insist no. He’d grunt. The receptionist told me to stop moving so much, it’s annoying him. “I’m shaking! Maybe give me a chair, so I can relax?”
In one of his moves around my body, the stencil landed on my forearm, my preference, and I stopped resisting. On the bed, with the next tattoo artist’s gun buzzing only inches away, I put headphones on, listening to podcast Bridgerton recaps. I like the artist’s work, even if he’s mean, I thought. It doesn’t matter. I need to stop shaking. Think less about this studio, the receptionist, the artist, his hands, his needles. I closed my eyes.
He didn’t speak until his gun stopped, “Well, do you like it?” He smothered it in gel before I could look. The receptionist asked for payment on Paypal, then asked for more because I chose “Business” not “Friends and family,” so they were charged a fee. I would have sent the extra euros, but I needed revenge for their manners. The tattooist stormed around the room, stopping to grab my arm for photos, then sat giggling with the receptionist. They told me, again, to pay more. My family texted: we’ll come throw punches! I said I was fine, stood up and walked out without a “Bonne journée” – a stinging faux pas, I hoped.
At lunch, my family said the tattoo looked great. I love it too, I said. I gulped two glasses of crisp rose. I could hardly look at it, more set on losing myself in their company around Lyon before the train home, rather than in a festering anxiety that associated the ink with its artist and forever embedded dread into its design.
I’d approached the appointment for enlightenment and reassurance but left defeated with basic insights: tattoos are an immature gamble. The space between artists, the tattooed and art is doomed with room for error and small margins for success. I could only tell myself, arrogantly, that my choices are sized down to squeeze past this very shaky wall. I decided to think about the tattoo, in isolation, later when I felt detached from its context so far.
When I told the story of the tattoo studio to a curator friend back in Paris, they said: well, at least it looks great! On the tattooist’s Instagram, his picture of my tattoo has 200 likes. I only posted a photo on my private burner account; under, it has sweet comments from my brother, sister and aunt. But if I look closely, I see a wobbly line, but it’s so small, and the tattoo so silly, I don’t think anyone else will notice. Like my other tattoos, I avoid looking closely often, knowing they’ll probably fail some metric of quality, meaning, expression and artistic standards if I do.
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One night in bed, I decided to stop saving tattoos on Instagram. The more I saved, the more ads popped up, each increasing my fear that most tattoos are badly chosen and badly executed, as if all rules of visual art and even aesthetic pleasure usually policing other artforms are irrelevant.
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