To Tat or Not to Tat?
Over the past couple of years, getting a tattoo has become something of a rite of passage in Brigid Beckman Schmidt's family. It started when her son asked for a Lark Tattoo gift certificate for his birthday. Her other son was the next to get one, followed by her daughter. So perhaps it wasn't a big surprise when, for her 47th birthday, Schmidt's children chipped in to get her a tattoo.
"I had said, for probably five or six years, someday I might get a tattoo. I had been divorced for about a year. I traveled and wrote and landed on my feet again and that year, for my birthday, I threw myself a big party and my kids gave me a $100 gift certificate for Lark Street, daring me to put my money where my mouth was."
Schmidt knew exactly what she wanted. She chose three Chinese symbols representing dance, joy and warrior that had been painted by a local artist and which her son had framed as a Mother's Day gift. "They mean a lot to me," says Schmidt. "It's about my becoming a joyful, dancing warrior."
As tattoos have become more mainstream, a growing number of women -- many of whom had toyed with the idea of tattoos for years -- are plucking up their courage and getting ink done. They're all ages and come from all backgrounds, but most of them share one thing in common: They're getting meaningful tattoos for personal reasons to mark pivotal events in their lives.
"I love the way they look. I look for shirts that have a V in the back and shoes that show them off. I love it when people ask me what they are and what they mean. It's nice for me to tell the story," says Schmidt. "But I have them because I love them."
What to know before you go
Tattoo artists have a saying: "Good tattoos aren't cheap and cheap tattoos aren't good." If you're considering getting a tattoo, look for the best artist, not the best price, because it will cost you much more to remove a bad tattoo than it will to get a good one.
Tattoo artist Josh Lyons of Albany Modern Body Art says people often hire him to go over old tattoos that they weren't happy with. "You need to research the art work, research the artist, really sit down and communicate, check over references and pictures of previous work," he says. The good news is that an increasing number of talented artists and art students are choosing to make their careers in this nontraditional medium.
As a former teacher, Schmidt knew enough to do her homework before she took the plunge. She chose Lark Tattoo, she says, because "it's been around for a long time, has a reputation for being exceptionally clean and professional, and all the artists there are artists. I picked Kara because my friend,
Alicia, had had another one done with her. I looked through the books of different artists and thought her sensibility was close to mine."
It's also a good idea to sit with the image for a while before taking the plunge, which is something that Alicia learned the hard way. Alicia Wein, 37, of Albany got her first tattoo at age 22 at the same time as her mother, who wanted one to celebrate her 40th birthday. Today, Wein has four tattoos that she loves, but the one on her back covers a tattoo she didn't like.
"I had a Celtic knot with a tree in the middle of it. I didn't like the look of it. Now I know it was the skill of the artist. I have just seen work that's much better," says Wein. "It wasn't as carefully selected as my other ones. I didn't live with the image for a while."
No Pain, No Gain
The growing popularity of tattoos has had a dramatic impact, not only on the level of artistry but also on the industry as a whole. Technical advances in inks and equipment have opened up a new world of artistic possibilities and greater oversight ensures everything is done safely. "There used to be a lot of dangerous inks on the market," says Lyons. "These days pretty much everything is regulated and safe."
Reputable tattoo artists are licensed by the Albany County Department of Health and certified in blood borne pathogens by OSHA, reducing the risk of infections, such as Hepatitis and HIV, which are spread via dirty needles. Lawmakers have also made it illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to get a tattoo.
The one thing that hasn't changed, however, is the suffering associated with the art. While Kara was tattooing the first character on her back, Schmidt says she was chitchatting to her friend thinking, "this isn't bad at all." Having her feet tattooed, however, was a whole different story. Even though she'd given birth to four children, Schmidt says, "It hurts a lot. I handled it by swearing a lot."
Although feet and ribs have become increasingly popular places for women to get tattoos -- because it allows them to see the tattoos and show them off, or cover them up if need be -- any place where the skin is close to the bone is going to be more painful than an area padded by fat and muscle.
For Clifton Park resident Liz Marsh, 41, however, getting a tattoo was nothing compared to the pain she experienced after breast reduction surgery. "I had a bad reaction to the sutures," says Marsh. "I spit stitches for about four months and had modest scarring. It wasn't so much the aesthetics but seeing that made me remember the four months of pain."
The idea of covering the scars with a tattoo didn't occur to her until she learned that many breast cancer survivors had found great solace in tattoos after surgery."I was looking for a way to reclaim my body and feel good about it again," Marsh says, noting that in her case, the transformation was instant. "Instead of being reminded of those very challenging months of recovery, I was looking down at the beautiful humming bird and a lotus flower, and it shifted that quickly," she say.
So while the days of drunken sailors stumbling into a local tattoo parlor and picking flash art off the wall may not be completely over, for many women at least, tattoos are becoming living art and a way to mark the turning points in their lives. "I feel deep pleasure and happiness just looking at them, because it reminds me of what they symbolize," says Schmidt. "Everything I experience now is through joy. I've tapped into my warrior strength, and I'm dancing through life!"
Til Death Do You Part? (or, what to do if you can't live with that tattoo)
Few people forget their first love but most don't want to be reminded of their ex on a daily basis. Johnny Depp's solution, to turn his Winona tattoo into Wino, is one way to deal with people who literally get under your skin. Tattoo artists say they are often asked to rework old tattoos to obscure names, but if you're really intent on a clean slate, other options exist. Be warned, however, few are cheap, most are painful, and none guarantee complete success.
The easiest, most affordable but probably least effective tattoo removal process comes in a tube. All tattoos fade to some degree over time if exposed to sunlight. Topical creams aim to speed and maximize fading by bringing the tattooed layer of skin closer to the surface and prevent the pigment from spreading to new layers of skin.
After extensive product testing, the Tattoo Removal Association ranked Tat-Med, Profade, Wrecking Balm, Tat B Gone, and Tattoo Fading (in that order) as the most effective and safest products on the market in 2010. The association, however, warns consumers about creams containing harmful chemicals, such as Hydroquinone (a carcinogen that has been banned in a number of countries including Japan, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany) and Trichloroacetic Acid, which literally burns off layers of skin.
Professional removal options include dermabrasion (sanding the skin off); salabrasion (using a salt block to rub the skin off); excision (cutting the tattoo out and stitching the skin back together); and skin grafts. Because these techniques can result in scarring, however, the most popular and effective professional procedure is laser tattoo removal.
At the Center for Facial Plastic Surgery and Laser Skin Care in Albany, cosmetic surgeon Dr. Arthur N. Falk uses high-energy, rapid-pulsed Q-switched lasers to break up the pigment in tattoo ink. Black, blue, and red are the easiest to disperse while yellow and green have staying power that makes them difficult to eliminate. In 2007, New York-based company Freedom2 produced a new tattoo ink made of smaller molecules encased in polymers that could be dissolved and dispersed completely after just one laser treatment. The product, called Infinitink, has yet to be widely embraced by tattoo artists, however, who prefer to think of their art as permanent.
If you thought getting the tattoo was painful, brace yourself. Even with a topical anesthetic, laser tattoo removal is more painful and the process typically requires six to eight treatments -- if not more -- over the course of at least as many months to give skin time to heal between each procedure. The price of removal is based on the size of the tattoo but it's not cheap. A tattoo that cost less than $100 could cost thousands to remove.
That, says Lori Kicinski, coordinator for the Center for Facial Plastic Surgery and Laser Skin Care in Albany, can be cost prohibitive for many of the under-30 set who come in seeking the procedure, which is why she advises people to take a long view before they decide on a tattoo. "People need to consider themselves 15 to 20 years down the road in terms of what their lifestyle may be and when they're choosing locations, how obvious the location might be," Kicinski says. "I don't think people know how difficult it is to remove them. When they say permanent tattooing, they're not joking."
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