Bruises vs tattoos: Members Only

cw: images of blood and piercing

I only have three small, stupid tattoos from when I was 20 or 21. These experiments taught me that while the process itself is interesting to me, I’m just not a tattoo person—I dislike making aesthetic decisions, commitment, and spending money. Small as they are, I often think about getting them removed. Maybe I will someday.

I was raised to think of tattoos as either sins (my Boomer dad) or as expressions of self-realization, embodiments of endurance tests that may not have left a physical mark (my Gen X mom)¹. Being in various communities that overlap through body modification, I now know a lot of heavily tattooed people who have a different relationship to all that ink: it makes them feel better about their bodies. While I found this surprising at first, I also immediately related to it: bruises make me feel better about my body.