Tattoos are a way for you to express yourself. You can decorate your body with anything you can imagine and have it there for the rest of your life. Common ones include flowers, butterflies, skulls, realistic, and Celtic. When getting a tattoo, you’re getting jabbed by a needle and depending on the size of the tattoos, you’re getting poked more than a thousand times in a minute! The law in Virginia for tattoos is that “No person shall tattoo or perform body piercing for hire or consideration on a person less than eighteen years of age, knowing or having reason to believe such person is less than eighteen years of age except (i) in the presence of the person’s parent or guardian”.

 Being one of the oldest forms of art, tattooing has been around for a very, very, very, long time. In the past, people would get tattoos for religious beliefs, certain symbols, and statuses. Now, people still do this but it’s more common for people to get things just for fun. Back then, people would get tattoos done by getting a needle, dipping it in soot or ink-like substances, and poking each individual dot. The most frequent color used is black, getting colored tattoos is possible but loses its vibrancy faster than black. Here at Liberty, many students and staff are seen with tattoos. I was fortunate to get some feedback from some of those people here at Liberty about their experience with tattoos and how they feel about them.

P.E. teacher, Coach Gaines, has six tattoos and isn’t planning on getting another. The reason he got his first tattoo done, when he was twenty years old, was because he wanted to try it out. He wanted to see what it was like, what it would be like after, and to decorate his body. On a scale of 1-10 on how painful it was, he said his first tattoo was a 9.5. One thing that changed was the way people treated him. He received a lot more attention and would get asked what his tattoos meant. When I asked if he regretted any tattoos, he said all of them. What caused him to think this way about his tattoos was the fact that at the time he wanted to express himself through tattoos but now he wants the blank space back and he spent a lot of money on them. A piece of advice he gives is;

 “Make sure it’s something you really want because it’s hard to take off,” said Coach Gaines

Journalism and Yearbook teacher Mrs. Davenport has ten tattoos. Mrs. Davenport had her first tattoo done when she was eighteen and is planning on getting more in the future. She got her tattoos for their meaning, each one is special to her, and as a form of expression. Getting her first one done she said that it didn’t hurt as bad as she thought it would, but that her feet and ribs were a solid 7-10 on the pain scale. Unlike Coach Gaines, Mrs.Davenport doesn’t regret a single one, again, because they all mean something to her. She also spends a lot of time deciding on a tattoo so in the end there’s no reason for her to regret them. When she was younger she said that people would look at tattoos differently than they do now. Today it’s a lot more expected, when she was eighteen to twenty-five, jobs she worked required them to be covered. If she could give any advice for people who are looking to get one she says;

“Just make sure it’s something that you’re not going to regret later on in life because it’s there forever unless you decide you want to pay to get it removed,” said Mrs. Davenport. “That’s my biggest advice, is just make sure it’s something you really want and make sure you pay attention to the aftercare instructions and make sure you keep it like clean.”

Liberty student, Sofia Ferman, has two tattoos and had her first one done when she was seventeen. She decided to get a tattoo in memory of her best friend who meant the world to her. People would call him Jay Rose, so she got a rose with the year 2007 from the year he was born. He always loved that he was born in 2007 and his favorite number was seven and he also loved roses. Sofia’s second tattoo is a matching tattoo she got with her best friend which she absolutely loves. Sofia said that when getting her tattoos, on a scale of 1-10 she’d give it a 6 because it is tolerable. Of course, there would be no reason to regret her tattoos because of their meaning to her. 

Sofia did receive some disrespectful remarks towards one of her tattoos but overall no negative attention. 

“Make your first one meaningful because you’ll never regret it ever and people usually regret their first tattoos. But if you make your first one very meaningful then it will be something you just cherish and it’s kind of like a type of closure for going through something,” said Sofia Fermand.