@roundtable
Swell Roundtable
@roundtable · 2:02

Swell Roundtable: Tattoos - Stories on our bodies

Then we can pontificate out as much as we want. Tell me in five minutes or less the first time your body received a tattoo, talk about your first tattoo, the decision you made to get it, the circumstances around getting that tattoo and your feelings now about that tattoo, looking forward

Welcome Eric, Taylor, Rachel and Dawn! Let’s talk about tattoos #tattoos #body #story #pride #history

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@Taylor
Taylor J
@Taylor · 4:49

Glad to be here!

I have the artistic ability of a preschooler, but the artist really managed to take my idea or my dream rather for this tattoo and turn it into something that I'm proud to display each and every day and serves as a constant reminder of how great of a family I have, and I know that sounds corny, but I feel that tattooing is so often associated with your passions and historically, it's really associated with your family as well, which I'm sure we'll touch on a little bit at some point
4
@Dawnie
Dawn Ellen
@Dawnie · 4:50

Tattoos for the Soul

Hi, Deborah. I just wanted to thank you very much for inviting me to be here. I will say that long ago I was not a proponent of tattoos. However, through the last I would say probably years, I have become a huge fan of them. I've got two boys that are tattooed practically from head to toe and another boy that has only a couple of tattoos and they were always saying to me, Come on, mom, get one, get one
5
@bowie
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 4:37

🦚🐣🦚

I really should have done more research looking back to it, but I went somewhere where I had known that people had gotten piercings and overall had a good experience. And I can't tell you exactly why I picked the first piece that I did, other than it just felt significant to me at the time. The work of the artist and that artist is M. C. Escher
4
@MerTroutt
Meranda Troutt
@MerTroutt · 0:48
Hi, Al Hoppin. I have one tattoo, and I got it two years ago, and it is a Phoenix with red and yellow watercolors on my hold on. I don't remember my left shoulder. It was actually designed by an ex partner of mine. He's an artist, and he designed it. Of course he didn't tattoo it, but he designed it. And it's also a matching tattoo with my sister
2
@illustratederic
Eric Emery
@illustratederic · 1:03
So I go to different artists around the country and let them do whatever they want. I've had most of them removed and redone by this point, and it's horrible. It's super painful, and I hate getting them, but I like having them. Yeah, that's really all I can think of. I like biomass tattoos the most. So most of my body is now BioMAC, and I'm pretty much covered at this point
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@roundtable
Swell Roundtable
@roundtable · 1:25

Publicly seen vs Privately placed tattoos? #intimacy #privacy #body

I have a lot of questions that are sparked from this first round, but I want to stick to the second one, so I just had to stop there out of coughing fit. I love this edit thing. You can go back and you can stop, and then you can go on. Okay. Second question. I'm fascinated by, and I'm sure, Eric, you're going to have a different answer for this than everyone else because of the amount of tattoos you have
2
@Taylor
Taylor J
@Taylor · 4:31

Took me some time to adjust...

And I keep being reminded of other fact that a lot of people are just shifting their opinions on what tattoos are and the more that you learn about tattoo culture and where it comes from and the stories behind people's tattoos. I mean, Eric says that a lot of his tattoos mean nothing, and a lot of mine mean nothing. But some of them do. And even the ones that mean nothing aesthetically serve a very important purpose
2
@Dawnie
Dawn Ellen
@Dawnie · 3:36
And I showed it to So and so and he said it was absolutely beautiful. Well, it is a real personal tattoo, although at this point I think everybody in the San Fernando Valley has probably seen it. But I was coming up on my 10th year of being a survivor of breast cancer and the left breast, which had been reconstructed too many times to even mention and had been radiated and had been filled with an implant that was entirely too large
2
@bowie
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 4:42

If ya got it, flaunt it 🙃

One of my early artists in San Francisco had whole sleeves removed so he could get different tattoos and no idea how he did it, especially because he admittedly was kind of a baby about just getting tattooed in general and said that he hated it as far as publicly seen and privately placed tattoos. I decided pretty early on. I should say I think I knew pretty early on that I was going to be someone that had really visible tattoos
@roundtable
Swell Roundtable
@roundtable · 2:46

Advice / check lists for the person who is deciding. #firsttime #virgin

And as I'm listening to this thread about the decisions we make, the agreements we make with ourselves, and the profound internal narrative that seems to emerge about tattoos, it feels like it's something that you and only you make the decision about. It's your domain and you're in control
2
@Taylor
Taylor J
@Taylor · 4:32
But if you're going to do something that's a little bit more on the silly side or doesn't have a significant emotional story attached to it, I would highly consider you to be very conscious of placement, because once you get that tattoo in a place that's visible to the public, you are going to have to deal with people asking you about it and my tattoo. When people would see it, they'd ask me and I have this really nice story about my family
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