26 • SKIN DEEP MAGAZINE
ness. What I love about tattooing is that, no matter how
familiar the act becomes over time, each tattoo still re-
mains one-of-a-kind, fuelled by individual motivations,
emotions and repercussions for the person carrying it.
Actually, no matter how much we try to view tattoos in
categories, lump them together with recurring themes
and emotions, the truth is that each person’s justification
will be different because (as long as tattoos continue to be
used as mirrors for our lives) our life experiences are all
so amazingly individual.
It would be irresponsible of me to make sweeping state-
ments about why the name tattoo remains to be so pop-
ular. It may unite the wearer with others, it may remind
them of something lost, it may signify trauma or grief orfreedom or sheer, simple happiness. What I have come to
learn by writing this article, and as you will notice, by the
clear lack of opinions here from others about their own
tattoo meanings, is that these artworks remain to be some
of the most personal, some of the hardest to open up about,
some of the most challenging to explain. If I was explor-
ing cat or movie tattoos, I think it would have been easier
to share anecdotes from our world, but explaining why a
person we don’t know that well loves another will always
be inextricably complicated and also, sometimes, no one
else’s business. When I hear someone utter, “this was my
grandad’s name, he passed away last year,” I know that the
tattoo isn’t as simple as it seems, there will nearly always
be a lot more going on, a private internal story and historic
memorable relationship that perhaps
not even the tattooer was privy to. Our
tattoos are merely the covers to our
storybooks, the full tales buried deep
beneath our skin and bones. Our in-tattoos are merely the covers to our
storybooks, the full tales buried deep
beneath our skin and bones