The New Tattoo Rules

Once a marker of rebellion, visible ink is now a widely accepted form of self-expression.

- Kate Foster

From the tiny envelope inked on my nape to the tube of lipstick above my right ankle, I have 15 tattoos in total. At least, I’m pretty sure I do. I’m starting to lose count. As a writer, I blame my body art obsession on my natural inclination to tell stories. When something interesting happens, I use it as the inspiration for a pitch…and then for a tattoo.

I teamed up with my childhood best friend to get my first one: To celebrate our eighteenth birthdays, we each got one side of a set of curly brackets (I got the left side, and she got the right). The day after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, I walked the two blocks to my neighborhood parlor and asked for the letters “G-R-R-R-L” on the back of my left upper arm, eager to express my womanly rage. And though I loathed growing up in the South at the time, my most recent ink of peaches is an homage to my home state of Georgia. (You know what absence does.)