In defence of the 'meaningless' tattoo

This article was originally featured in Issue 1 of VORACIOUS Magazine. Never miss another issue with a subscription, or purchase Issue 2 as a one-off if you prefer!

It’s a question all of us with visible tattoos have been asked at least one point in our lives: what’s that for, then? But do you have to have a reason? We think not.

A couple of months ago, whilst browsing instagram, my pal Alice did a jokey story about getting her annual intention tattooed on her, for lols. I replied with “odds on”, because, like Ms Norbury, I’m a pusher, and seconds later, she was video calling me to actually put her skin on the line (or, more accurately, to put the line on her skin.) Unfortunately, I lost odds on, and to my knowledge she still doesn’t have this tattoo, but something far more monumental was set in place that day: my want for a spontaneous, ultimately meaningless tattoo.

Because, contrary to the decades’, if not centuries’ and millennia’s worth of parents around the world trotting out that old chestnut that “because I want to” is not a good enough excuse: it is. If you want a permanent inking on your skin, you can do it: you don’t have to have any deep, life-affirming reason. You don’t even need this permission slip from me, really. You don’t need anything, other than the rational capacity to make the assessment that you want some permanent ink under your skin.

In fact, the entire thought process behind a tattoo might be because of a dare, as was also the case with Matt, founder of Glasshouse Florals: “I got this [leprechaun] because someone called me an evil leprechaun and I said that I dared get it tattooed. Nobody believed me until I turned up the next week, new tattoo on leg.”

One of Alyx Weston’s 50+ tattoos: a Sarah Whitehouse interpretation of a Gabrielle d’Estreés painting.

Or, sometimes, the extent of the rationale might be: it’s something you saw, and just instantly felt a kind of attachment to. This was the case for Alyx, founder of Shell and Ink, and one of her 50+ tattoos: a Sarah Whitehouse interpretation of a Gabrielle d’Estreés painting. “I did medieval history as my degree so the painting is one that I’ve known and loved for a long time, but I actually saw a rendition of it in sushi years ago and saved it on my phone. I refound it one day and it made me think of Sarah’s cartoons so I booked it in.”

If your algorithm is anything like mine, then instagram will probably be a huge source of inspiration too, where you’ll be browsing and one day suddenly see a design you’d love to have on your body forever. Ceramicist Kate Emma Lee (and Enthusiast collaborator - shop here) had this with an Emily Malice cheetah she now has immortalised on her upper arm. “I saw it on her instagram and just thought it was amusing and had a great face.” she recalls. “I didn't actually realise it was a cheetah until Emily asked me if I liked cats halfway through the tattoo...I’m more of a dog person, but I think it looks like a cross between a cat and a dog so I call her catdog.”

Kate Emma Lee and Catdog

It’s not only in the digital world that we can find inspiration, either: in particular, in the good old analogue world, gumball machine tattoos are quickly gaining popularity, where you pay a certain amount to get the design that the machine dispenses (again, because the algorithm is inside my brain, I see a lot of these on TikTok.) This is a not-dissimilar experience to how illustrator Stacie Swift picked her first tattoo, almost 20 years ago. “[At my] all girls school, in the year we were 15 turning 16, lots of girls started getting tattoos and piercings. Knowing I was probably going to go ahead and find a way to get a tattoo anyway, my mum agreed to take me to get a tattoo somewhere safe and clean, and to pay for it as an early 16th birthday present. Back then, without Pinterest or Instagram to inspire anything too exciting or artistic, I walked into the shop and had a flick through the books and settled on a butterfly. I asked them to change the colour so it was blue and pink and that's the most thought I put into it.”

Alternatively, some people go down the route of extensively planned out, meticulous & meaningful tattoos first. (Like me: my first tattoo was self-designed wording on my ribs, a visible - to me - reminder to stop and breathe when my anxiety was overwhelming me.) Simran, the CEO of charity Student Hubs, got her first tattoo done at 25. “It was a massive floral piece and also had a lot of emotional labour attached to it, as it took 2 years to get my Indian parents to understand what and why I wanted a tattoo. It was pretty challenging getting them to understand why, as they held such strong views about them tied to the racist abuse they received when they moved to London in the 70s.” Then, 6 months later, “I was just standing in my kitchen flicking through Instagram when I saw this artist I followed put up some sketches of wolves they had drawn. There were several pages of wolves in all sorts of poses and I was drawn to one in particular - I just really liked the softness of the lines and how chilled this wolf looked. It had some little mushrooms growing next to its side and I just thought it looked so peaceful. One morning before work I decided I needed to just enquire and see what the deal was with them and by lunchtime I'd been booked in for late November!”

Simran Dhanjal’s tattoo by Ruby Wolfe

Vic Paterson, a soft tissue therapist and hypnotherapist based in Lincolnshire, also “agonised” over her first tattoo “for months. It [a small piece of script saying “Shine” to mark climbing Half Dome in Yosemite National Park] - was meaningful, but once I’d had that first tattoo, I realised that actually, I could just have a tattoo because I liked it, it didn’t have to be deep…it could just be fun!” Since then, she’s added a plethora of tattoos, including a cyborg-style arm (after she saw an article on a fitter of robotics) and a grim reaper with a cat, from Mr Heggie (“He posted a picture of it on Instagram, and I saw it and fell in love with it, and trekked down to Brighton to have it tattooed on my leg. It means absolutely nothing at all, other than ‘I liked this and it made me smile’”.)

Whether born from saved sushi, dares, teenage tenacity, or timely instagram scrolls - have any of these just-because tattoos ended in regret? Not a chance. On the contrary, Stacie sees it as “a fun reminder of my youth! I like that it pinpoints a moment in time; it might not be what I would choose now but it's a memento of who I was then.” It is, in a way, a tiny act of fossilization; a way of preserving you at that slice of time forever, forming a tangible, unbreakable connection to the version of you in the present day.

Similarly, Vic doesn’t regret any of hers. “I started having tattoos in my thirties and I’m 47 now.” she notes. “Once you’ve had a tattoo for a while, you almost forget you have it, it’s just what you look like. My tattoos are part of me. They’ll fade and maybe distort over time, but it’s just part of ageing, and that’s just fine. I’m all up for being an old lady with tattoos!”

And Kate - and catdog - agree. “Even if I think differently in a few years time (I won't), she'll always be my first tattoo and she'll remind me of my past self who thought it was funny. I think you have to be compassionate with yourself and even questionable decisions are part of your story so you've got to embrace them, haven't you?”

Photo by Andrej Lišakov

It’s this, I think, that gets to the heart of it. Of course, every tattoo has meaning in a way, no matter how small - both in terms of the tattoo, and the meaning. The entirety of the justification might even be, in the words of Billie Piper, “because I want(ed) to”, and that is totally fine! Whatever it is, it will always represent a time, a place, an event, a feeling, or something slightly larger than itself. (For example, Alyx will never be able to look at one of her tattoos, a bottle with a hand holding a book inside and wording underneath, without thinking of the accompanying story: “This one was another I thought looked cool and asked if I could have. The artist is based in Milan, so I, obviously, booked a flight to Madrid...I only realised my mistake the week before, so I ended up flying to Madrid, staying one night, flying to Milan the next morning, getting my tattoo in the afternoon, staying in an airbnb ‘til 2am then flying back to Madrid early Sunday morning and then finally back home.”) If you ask me, this is definitely something to embrace.

Though some may scoff at the comparison, tattoos are an artform. When hung in galleries, we don’t always ask why art moves us (well, actually, I did a whole module on aesthetics at uni and loved it, but that’s not the point); we just accept that it does, and love it for that. So why should we have to be able to explain all of our tattoos? The obvious rebuttal is, of course, that we often don’t get the art tattooed on us forever, but if that’s a choice we’re happy to make, then what’s the problem?

So, if you think of a tattoo you’d like to get, but can’t think of a reason why: I say, don’t sweat it. There doesn’t need to be a why, as long as you feel a connection to it (and, the usual caveat: it isn’t offensive, culturally appropriated, or inappropriate.) Always make sure you feel safe and comfortable with both your tattoo artist, and the environment in which you get it done; consider the placement of your tattoos, and look after them whilst they’re healing. And, of course, remember to tell me the story of why you got it - because, though I hate to sound like the people that I took the mickey out of above...I really do love to hear it!