Although I am by no means a stranger to the world of body modification, so far my experiences have been strictly piercing related. I love all of my current body mods, they are a strong part of who I am and how I express myself. And over the last few months the idea of tattooing has pushed itself more and more to the front of my mind.
At A Glance Author Depressed Shadows Contact [email protected] When N/A I have always maintained the notion that piercings are fine on a spontaneous level - they are never there forever, and if I one day do become a conservative 9-5 worker, I can take them out. Tattoos, permanent, there forever, something I perhaps don't want to ink into my skin at 18 years old.
All this aside, tonight I felt there was no harm in drawing some ideas of what I would like one day. For a year or so now I've wanted a tattoo of a cat with a star from its tail, purely because I love cats. I also want something to signify the end of my school years, which were hell, and the start of my college years, where I am someone new. I want to signify the freedom from the life I have had to endure. The question was however, what to get for my 'freedom' tattoo?
And that gradually evolved into the question of - what does represent freedom?
A traditional representation of freedom is wings, butterflies and birds - the freedom of flight. Which does mean in turn that the sky can be thought of in this way.
Curious, I did a search on Google to see what it thought of freedom. I did the same on the popular DeviantART website. And both came up with the similar thoughts. Wings and butterflies.
Well this is all well and good, but of course, many tattoo bearers have very intricate and personal meanings behind their tattoos. Some have things that hold tribute to the things they have overcome in their lives. These people do not tattoo to 'look cool'. They do not tattoo just because it is a phase. They tattoo because body modification is a form of expressing a part of themselves and it is through designing something that is meaningful to just myself that I really want to capture. I do not want to have a pretty image of a butterfly tattooed onto me just because it is a common representation of freedom.
So then clever one, what does freedom mean to YOU?
I thought about this for quite a while, all whilst laying out the foundations for my star tailed cat design. And when it was done, and I was content, I simply chilled out. I looked around BME for a while.
Several hours later, I glanced at my cat tattoo design, and it was only truly then that it hit me.
My cat, with its little star tail, was my freedom tattoo.
As simple as it seems, it does make me realise just how much body modification can represent to someone. We risk dream jobs, we risk prejudice from uninformed people, some people can even face rejection from their own families. When I first went to have my lobes gunned, even with my first 'proper' piercing, my labret, I never truly realised just how deeply a part of a person body mods are. Tattoo designs that may not even hold any understand to us can mean so much to the person that adorns them, and I highly admire someone who chooses to do that.
So I would much rather sit here, and let the true piece of body art that will hold so much meaning for me form smoothly on the paper rather than choose to let a worldwide known symbol do that for me. It took until now, from having the design in my head for so many months for me to realise what meaning I was trying to put across in this design. I really hope that anyone else out there who knows that they would like to have a tattoo but aren't sure of what they want wait, wait and let the design come to you, and make it something special.
And of course, if you're a minor, like I currently am, please wait! The thing is, you can draw that burning image in your head. And you can wait until you're of legal age like me and then you can say "Yes, that design does mean something to me, I've waited this long to have it put permanently on me." I will be saying exactly the same thing when I eventually have my cat inked into my skin.
Of course we all know, flash was invented for a reason. And truly individual people have their own unique meaningful designs placed upon them for an even better reason.
And that, more than anything is freedom.