I have tattoos.: Wife, mother, daughter, registered nurse.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Wife, mother, daughter, registered nurse.

My name is Monica.

I’m a wife, a mother and loving registered nurse. During my free time, you can find me playing with my children, hanging out with my friends and our families, or you might catch me trying to find a way to brighten someone’s day.

When I’m working, my tattoos are covered under my scrubs. When outside of work, you’ll see my colorful art displayed on my chest and foot. The fairy on my foot was my first tattoo, I got it in 1997 when my father was given three months to live. Together, as a gift from him, we went and got tattoos together (my dad was always against tattoos), because he knew it would be a gift of a lifetime. My fairy is sprinkling magic dust to remind me that life is precious and magical, so magical that 15 years later, my dad is still with us.

The koi fish on the left side of my chest remind me of what I’ve been through over the last six months and to remind me to never give up. No matter how hard life gets, I need to keep swimming. It reminds me of my aspiration, strength and perseverance. The right side of my chest displays the spirit of an owl with a gypsy woman who has an American Indian appearance to her. It’s to remind me to always follow my intuition and gut instinct. To treat all mankind with kindness and love.

I have tattoos.

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I have tattoos.

The most recent research shows 40 percent of Americans between 26 and 40 have at least one tattoo. That's nearly half of us. Furthermore, 36 percent of people between 18 and 25 do. Normal people. Successful people. Smart people. Truly, anyone.

Yet outdated stigmas and discrimination still exists, based solely on some people's unfounded misconceptions about the way a tattooed person looks -- completely disregarding the statistics, individual characters and the stories behind the tattoos.

Yes, tattoos are a choice. So is practicing a narrow perspective.

Perhaps the increase in tattoos amplifies some people's already prevailing prejudgments about people who look different than them. It's so much easier to write off a person based on something you, on the surface level, do not understand than it is to actually consider what lies underneath, below the skin.

This website was created after I witnessed an incident of discrimination against the "tattoo demographic," as a whole. This website is intended to help educate and dispel myths that you can even begin to classify people with tattoos in one "demographic," much less as all trouble-makers, all out for attention or in any way worth diminishing based on assumptions; no one deserves that.

Ultimately, this website is not even about tattoos, but it is about the real stories behind each person's surface. This website is not intended to convince anyone that they should get a tattoo, or that they should even like tattoos if they don't choose to get one themselves.

After all, as the saying goes, the only difference between people with tattoos and people without tattoos is that people with tattoos don't care whether or not other people have tattoos.