Changing perception day by day..

Once in a great while, you have a conversation that makes you think. It can be with someone you already know or a complete stranger, but it happens, and you can’t get it out of your head for anything. And you don’t want to.

Since I got my first tattoo at age eighteen, I have been viewed differently. Of course, one in three people in the United States have at least one tattoo these days, but there has always been a stereotype leading back to a negative connotation – bikers, drug addicts, and all around bad people. I am, of course, none of those things, and I know it. As I added onto the collection of color on my skin, I noticed more and more that I was being looked at in public, and these days it is not uncommon for a random person to make a comment to me, or reach out to touch my skin. For the most part, I don’t mind it. More times than not, they are respectful interactions.

I was probably 19 or 20 when this photo was taken. 

I am not writing this as some sort of sermon about how all people with tattoos aren’t bad people. Individuals who fit into the negative connotation still exist, and they are everywhere. What I am out to say, though, is that I am proud of myself. Proud of what I have been able to do with the life I’ve been given. I have a great full-time job, a home, and a relationship with someone who cares about me. I make enough money to live, and then some. I am supported by friends and family, and they are more protective of me than anything else.

Going with the negative connotation by the general public, though, I still notice things. I am stared at constantly at stores and restaurants, especially when I am with family. I have been followed around at stores in the past since I apparently look like someone that would steal (to the point that I had to get money out to prove I could pay for the things I was carrying). In order to interview for my current job, I wore long sleeves, wore my hair down, and removed the facial piercings that I could, just to not be judged.

And you know what? I got that job. And the one after it. These days, I hide nothing. I am accepted. I work each and every day just like everyone else, tattooed or not. What the general population still sees, though, is my tattoos, not me. And you know what? That’s fine with me.

Being heavily tattooed is wonderful in some aspects and a burden in others. Wonderful in that I have set out, from basically day one, to change people’s minds about heavily tattooed individuals. I do what I can to volunteer with free time to improve the lives of others. I field questions whenever I get them – my favorite is the “didn’t that hurt?” in response to my septum piercing – and just all around attempt to help improve people’s view of someone ‘like me’.

What this all comes down to is the conversation that I had yesterday. I was at a local Michael’s store, buying a bottle of Mod Podge to continue a project I’m working on. I was just about to the checkout, when there was a woman standing there asking the cashier a question. Instead of just walking away, though, she took one look at me and took me aside. “You are one of the most beautiful people I have ever seen.”

Standing there in my thrifted Rod Stewart t-shirt from 2007 and my bright purple corduroy shorts, I didn’t exactly believe her. She looked at my tattoos, made a comment about the Vincent Price portrait on my thigh, and asked to give me a hug. I didn’t exactly know how to take this sudden flow of positivity, but I just went with it. I hugged her and we launched into a conversation about who I am, what I do, and how much I appreciated her amazing comments. So often, someone makes a single comment and doesn’t say anything else.

2010.

She introduced me to her daughter, who, just by looking at her, reminded me a lot of myself in high school. Dark hair, a Joan Jett t-shirt, studded belt. A person I have been. In some aspects, likely outcast for not being the status quo, but also due to the help of her supportive mother, taking life by the horns and doing what she wants to do anyway – looks included. It was refreshing.

I was, and am, lucky to have the parents that I do. I have been fully supported in most every viable decision that I have made to get myself where I am today. The girl’s mother reminded me a lot of my own, and it made me happy to know that someday, maybe at my age, the girl would have the same attitude that I do about life and the world around her.

They told me they are working to put together a project centering on changing people’s minds about the tattooed community, and I was all in. I gave her my information, and we parted ways. She told me that she would call or e-mail me to keep in touch, and I hope she does.

Sometimes, conversations strike you at exactly the right time, and the words are exactly both what you need to hear, and what you need to say.

I wish life could always be that pure.