what do we decide is permanent? (pt. 1)
how the concept of permanence shapes our collective beliefs and decisions.
I live in Minnesota, as you may know, which means I spend 6 months out of the year in pants and a sweater. This also means that, every spring, I run into someone that met me during the winter and one of the first things they say is, “Oh wow, I didn’t know you had so many tattoos!” I’ll glance down at my bare arms as if it’s also my first time seeing them, bend over to check that my legs are indeed still my legs, and go, “Yeah, I guess I do!”
At the moment of writing this, I have 22 tattoos on my arms and legs (and a back piece scheduled for January). I started getting tattooed the minute I turned 18. I went to a small shop in the suburbs with my best friend at my side, money from my grad party gifts clutched in my hand, and requested the deathly hallows mark from Harry Potter, as well as a quote that is in both HP and the Bible: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”1 It cost me $80 bucks. The lines were crisp and strong, and the experience was warm and easy. I couldn’t wait to get more because my body was a temple, etc. etc. so of course I should decorate it, etc. etc.
In the years that followed, I continued to get tattoos that I loved. Until, as will happen to anyone who gets tattooed for the sake of getting tattooed, I got one that I absolutely fucking hated.
I had set up an appointment with an artist who’s work I thought was lovely. Unexpectedly, she quit, and the studio called me to say there was another artist who would be willing to do the design instead so there would be no reason to cancel the appointment. Red fucking flag, but I was maybe 22 years old? I hadn’t yet learned to say no, which means I said yes to this artist after they drew up the shakiest, least crisp, shittiest fucking design I’d ever seen.
To be fair, I dissociated immediately. Like, I held the drawing in my hands (this was before artists used iPads, isn’t that quaint), looked at it, and my soul promptly left this realm.2 I do not remember what I said. I don’t even remember being tattooed. I don’t remember how much it cost, only that I tipped her (wild what our brains decide is important information to keep). What I’ll never forget is unwrapping the plastic around my arm hours later and bursting into tears. It was, objectively, hideous.
I ended up wearing long sleeves for a month until I could get an artist I trusted to cover it up. However, there was only so much a cover up could do! Even after the new artist touched up the lines and colors best they could, I felt what could only be described as deep animosity toward this imperfect reminder of permanence on my arm. I melted into self-consciousness anytime someone would ask about it, or look at it, or even say they thought it was pretty. I was ashamed that I’d gotten something permanent on my body that I didn’t like.
This went on for months until, one day, as I was performing my well-practiced response to someone saying they liked the design (“it’s actually not what I wanted, this is a cover up, I wish it were different”), this person interrupted to say:
“Well, it’s your body, so don’t wish too hard. Besides, bodies change in ways we won’t like, without our permission, all the time. It’s not something to be embarrassed about.”
Have you experienced this before? Where someone will say something, or you’ll read a phrase, and it’s like a sniper bullet through your eyes/ears to an aspect of your world-view deep in your brain, and out the other side? This was one of those moments. I wanted to throw up, it felt so PROFOUND. I mean, fuck, who just says something like that on a Tuesday? And they walked away after and like, what, ate a sandwich or something?
Shame is second nature for me. I can’t tell if you’re nodding, but if you’re not, I don’t know if I believe you. Shame is often cushioned deep in phrases like, “I just feel bad,” or marinating around our avoidance. For me, it’s typically in my silence. I rarely feel it when it comes to things that feel temporary or momentary, but when it comes to situations that will or have affected me for more than an hour or two… I’m waving the shame train into the station baby!
My initial attitude toward getting tattoos had always led me to believe that I have a good relationship with permanence. I mean, since we were wee lads our parents, teachers, and authority figures warned us against body modification by instilling anxiety around the idea of them “lasting forever.” Even now, at our big age, adults without tattoos will talk to me about them anxiously, featuring greatest hits like:
“What if I don’t like that piece of art/media/culture forever?”
”What if the design isn’t great and then I have to look at it forever?”
“Aren’t you worried about what they’ll look like when you’re old?”
You might be surprised to hear me say this, but I genuinely think these are good and valid questions! I encourage everyone to consider these things before they spend money on a tattoo, especially because there was a time when I didn’t. I’m 22 deep and I have tattoos that I wouldn’t get again. I have one I had covered up because it was not executed well. I have one where the artist didn’t do what I asked and I cried afterward.
But once a tattoo is on my body, it is part of my body. I have some that are so perfect I wept tears of happiness seeing how the art instantly changed how I felt about that body part. Going through the pain knowing (sometimes hoping) I’ll have something beautiful and gorgeous that’s unique to me is such a lovely and freeing process. But it’s a process that involves trusting someone else to listen to you and then execute a difficult skill on your skin. It doesn’t always go perfectly because humans are not perfect and skill is a spectrum that can be hard to individually assess.
And like that wizened old sniper said: my changing body, regardless of what is being changed and how, is never something to be ashamed of. Even if it changed because I dissociated in the tattoo shop lobby and let an artist put something bad on me. I don’t owe anyone an apology, nor do I need to punish myself or hide myself away, for having ugly art on my arm.
Folks who talk about the potential for regret or get a kick out of shaming people’s tattoos3 “because they’re forever” are usually doing so in an effort to either make themselves feel good for not having any (weird), or to influence your decisions as an adult (very weird). They’re never mentioning permanence because they want to save you from shame. I think it’s literally the opposite. I think (perhaps even unwittingly because I love to believe the best in people) folks do all this because they think shame is a useful emotion. They’re showing you how they believe you should feel when they eventually pass their judgment on your decisions down the line.
And where you feel shame, you will judge someone else in the same situations you’ve been taught to feel it, perhaps instilling it in them as well. Because none of this is actually about tattoos. Culturally, we have handed down ideas of permanence around things that are not at all permanent in order to utilize shame as a tool of control.
My body is, inherently, not permanent. Like…I can get a tattoo removed or covered up. Hell, I could lose an arm and then where’s that tattoo now? Yet, historically and presently, we continue to perpetuate this idea of permanence around our bodies that pushes us toward conventional, pseudo-Christian ways of thinking. Permanence is scary and may lead to shame.
Avoid! Avoid! Avoid!
So, naturally, because I’m an Aries with a Capricorn rising,4 thinking about our cultural relationship to permanence made me wonder how else it’s applied. Or rather, how it’s not applied.
Follow me here: if permanence is a concept…which, in many ways it is…that means we can pick and choose when to apply it, right? Could we, maybe, convince people to do permanent things by simply…presenting them as…not…permanent? We don’t have to liiiie exactly, we could just simply never use the words “permanent,” or, “forever,” or, “always." You know? What if, instead of saying, “This decision is forever,” we said, “This decision is a gift?” Like, would it be possible to do something akin to gaslighting when people, upon realizing, “oh shit, this is for the rest of my life,” begin to feel regret? We’d probably have to condition them to view it as disrespectful, rude, and even shameful to question this decision first, or to ask questions if someone else wants to make this decision. No, no, people should be ashamed to get tattoos or get a divorce, and we’ll make sure they should’ve known their decisions were permanent. But this? We want them to do this, so let’s just-
Wait, we can do that? It’ll work? What do you mean we’ve been doing it? With what?
Oh! Oh.
Children.
Currently reading: “Black Liturgies” by Cole Arthur Riley and “We Wanted to Welcome You” by Vincent Tirado.
Currently watching: “Mr. Plankton” (a very funny K-Drama) and “The Great British Baking Show” (because the world is hard and watching people bake is nice) on Netflix.
Insane choice, yes, but I was an evangelical Harry Potter fan when I was young. I am currently neither but, no, I’m not getting it removed.
Fun fact: I’ve had a dissociative disorder long before I even knew what that was. It ravaged my youth but is much more manageable these days, thank the gods.
I’m not exempt from having fed into tattoo shame culture before. But once I realized I was actually just commenting on someone’s body, I nipped it in the bud.
I don’t know what this means.