Mel's Tattoo and Her Mother

I thought this would be a good post for Mother's Day, as will be self-evident. It started, however, with a father-daughter outing. My eldest and I were seeing a play in Manhattan back in December. The show never went off, however, due to some staging difficulties. While we were waiting in the lobby, we were standing next to a woman with the following tattoo, and we got to talking:

This tattoo is on Mel (interestingly enough, a name my wife and mother of my children goes by) who told us how this tattoo came to be:

"My mom had been talking about getting a tattoo after my parents got divorced along time ago, but she was always kind of opposed to tattoos. So I told her if she ever wanted to get one, I'd get one with her. [She] never took me up on it for about ten years and then, two summers ago now, she just called me up one day in August, and was like, you're coming home at the end of October, right? We're getting tattoos and I know what we're getting. And I was like, okay.  Two months is not a lot of warning, and so, she had seen on Facebook people getting semi-colon tattoos as a response to dealing with depression and my mom has dealt with depression her whole life. She was like, I just don't want a semi colon I want to do something better and so we put a lot of thought into it and figured out you can make the body of a dragonfly, which is my mom's favorite animal, into a semi-colon ... it's really subtle and you would never know it's there unless I tell you that it's in there and it's got a water lily because that's her favorite flower ... she has a version of this on her wrist and I have mine on my arm."

Interestingly, a woman standing nearby had overheard Mel telling me this and chimed in that the semi-colon is  "a little more specifically related to survivors of suicide, because the semi-colon could have stopped their life but didn't."

Considering how suicide and depression are intrinsically linked, the semi-colon for depression still makes sense and Mel seemed unphased by the stranger's clarification. Tattoos mean what they mean to the possessor and, even if they mean something to others, it shouldn't detract from their power to the person who has chosen to mark themselves permanently.

Mel credited Jake Phillips (@twistedskullstudios) from Twisted Skull Tattoo Studio in La Crosse, Wisconsin with the tattoo.

Thanks to Mel for sharing her tattoo with us! Wishing Mel's mom and all mother's out there a happy Mother's Day!

This entry is ©2018 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Happy Mother's Day! (A Tina Tassels Repost)

In honor of Mother's Day, I'm recycling a lovely post from October 2012, featuring the lovely Tina Tassels. This was originally posted on Tina's birthday, but it's worth revisiting, in a slightly revised form, today.

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One of the perks of randomly going up to people with interesting tattoos is that I have, over the years, met several burlesque performers. Whether it be Annie Cherry from Kansas City, or NY-based performers Legs Malone and Miss Clams Casino, I occasionally find myself in the presence of some very talented artists.

Case in point, this summer [2012] I ran into a woman on the subway with a diamond tattooed on one of her knuckles. Although I didn't photograph it, we stayed in touch and I learned that she was none other than Tina Tassels.

Photo Courtesy of Molto Burlesque (via Facebook)

When I first met Tina in the spring, her arms were covered, so I didn't get to initially see the three pieces on her arm, but I subconsciously registered them. A few months later, in the middle of the summer, when I sat down on the train next to a pink-haired lady on the subway, I recognized the work, but couldn't remember where I'd seen it. After five years of inkblogging, such things are hard to instantly recall.

However, when I saw her diamond knuckle, it all came back to me, and Tina and I got to chatting again. In the glare of the R train's fluorescent lights, I snapped this photo from the back part of Tina's arm:

This may not be the best of Tina's tattoos, but it was her first, and it is near and dear to her heart.

She pointed out that it says Mommy instead of Mom, because she was concerned with how her mother would react to her getting her first tattoo. "Basically," Tina told me, "it was my first tattoo to butter her up."

The scissors and comb represent the fact that her mom is a salon owner and as Tina explained, "that's what I associate with her before anything ... she's a hard worker."

Tina had this done in 2009 by Derik Snell when he was at Hand of Glory Tattoo in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Derik now tattoos out of Flying Tiger Tattoo in New Britain, Connecticut. I have a Derek Snell design (inked by Brian Faulk) as well (documented here) and his work has also appeared on Tattoosday here.

I want to wish Tina a happy birthday and encourage people to check out her blog, Big Hips, Big Dreams.

Thanks again to Tina for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

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Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there!

This entry is ©2012, 2015 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.