I have tattoos.: Father, husband, artist, donor to the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Father, husband, artist, donor to the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance

I'm a father, husband, tattoo artist and shop owner.

My love for art started when I was 4. My grandmother, who I lived with at the time, would give me a pencil and paper to draw on while sitting through Catholic mass. After that, I never put my pencil down. I went to a junior college for commercial art, but after learning that I would only be making art on the computer, I decided it wasn’t for me. I liked illustrating. After getting a couple of tattoos and watching my artist, I decided I wanted to be a tattoo artist. From there, I learned to tattoo, and I am now a successful shop owner.

When I’m not at the shop, you can find me fishing, hanging out with my wife and kids or at a sport event watching my son. My shop has donated to charitable events, one being Ovarian Cancer National Alliance.

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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Yet outdated stigmas and discrimination still exists, based solely on some people's unfounded misconceptions about the way a tattooed person looks -- completely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.