I happened across a blog post the other day (forgot to bookmark, oops!) wherein it was suggested that women who have tattoos must be promiscuous because ‘they like having things stuck in them.’ This statement is so silly as to hardly even be offensive, but it did get me thinking about tattoos: what they mean and how people perceive them.

Browsing for inspiration I happened upon Liz Jones writing in the Daily Mail. ‘Why DO Women have these Tramp Stamps?’ the headline shouts. Needless to say, our Lizzy ain’t a fan. Among other things she feels tattoos: “instantly [turn] the classiest, chicest woman into trailer trash,” that they are “the most tasteless, tacky, tawdry, terrible plague to infect our nation since mad cow disease” (mad cow disease is tacky?) and says Oscar-winning bombshell-come-UN ambassador Angelina Jolie’s tattoos render her: “her cheap and hopelessly common.” At a glance, that’s an awful lot of work for a little bit of ink to do.

I suspect Liz’s real problem isn’t with the tattoos though, it’s with the idea of a woman daring to use her body in a way that pleases herself, rather than others.  “What I hate most about all these celebrity tattoos is …  that tattoo wearers think that by writing on themselves, a la Angelina Jolie … that they have meaning in their lives,” she spits.

That’s right, Liz. Don’t hold back. How dare women venture to assert or express something about themselves through their appearance! After all women’s bodies exist to please men, so they can bag themselves a hubby and then indenture their body to children. They have NO BUSINESS going around decorating it according to their own whims! (etc)

I have five tattoos and I love them all. I have collected them over a few years and each has very real significance. The latest, I’m especially proud of: across the arch of my right foot are the words ‘rodando como una piedra’ — a translation of ‘like a rolling stone’. I got it after I quit my last (awful) job and decided to pursue a freelance writing career. It  is both a nod to the Bob Dylan song, which I love, and a declaration of intent; a statement that I have elected to free myself from old ways of thinking and being and chart a new course.

Whether others find it attractive, or objectionable, is of zero interest to me. That, I think, is the crux of what bothers Liz (and the ‘promiscuous’ chap) — the old order, the system, The Man — can’t bear the idea of women liberating themselves and pursuing their lives and dreams without reference to what they’re ’supposed’ to be doing.

You don’t have to have a tattoo to be a rebel, but it’s damn cool if you do.