I have tattoos.: Father, lover, gentle giant, artist.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Father, lover, gentle giant, artist.

I will be 30 years old in a couple months. I am the father of the most precious 2-year-old girl in the world named Bettie. I am the husband of the most beautiful woman I could ever lay my eyes on. Not everyone knows me, but those who do know me as such. At 6 and a half feet tall with and athletic 230-pound build, I have been told I can be intimidating. In fact, a few weeks ago one of the neighbor kids told my wife, "Bettie's dad is scary."

This is the same kid who now runs up to my car every day when I get home from work to borrow my skateboard.

The point is once he got to know me, he found out I wasn't all that scary. In fact my wife, should be the one you're afraid of. I'm just a push-over. I have a laid-back demeanor and a kind and gentle heart. I shed tears at Disney movies. The only fights I have ever been in were fights for other people, standing up for my friends.

I have been called a hoodlum, a punk, even white trash. Maybe it's my big frame, or baseball cap, or maybe it's my tattoos. That's right, I am tattooed. But I want you all to know something: You can be afraid or intimidated. You can judge me and call me a white trash. You can tell me I am not welcome in your home, and you don't have to hire me. It won't bother me, because at the end of the day my wife will not be afraid to embrace me, my daughter will still call me daddy, I will make my own home, and the job? I plan on opening my own business in the coming months. So keep your job, I am a tattoo artist.

I am tattooed.
But it's OK if your not.

1 comment:

UnknownOctober 1, 2012 at 5:02 AM
you've just reminded me of my dad.He is a civil engineer with a big heart in a big body;I'm actually 6"5' 240 pounds myself so I kinda identify with him .I do not want to generalize too much but I think bigger folks are somewhat gentler and less aggressive than shorties(nothing against them though).
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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Yet outdated stigmas and discrimination still exists, based solely on some people's unfounded misconceptions about the way a tattooed person looks -- completely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.