They all have visible tattoos.

And it isn’t like anyone ELSE in the show or movie has a tattoo. Only the bad guy.

When I was around 12 years old, I decided that I would really enjoy having a tattoo one day. I voiced my desire for ink to my mother, who promptly scrunched up her face like she was going to cry, and then proceeded to tell me, in no uncertain terms, that people only get tattoos if they’ve been to prison. She told her best friend about my idea, and her best friend told me that she would never speak to me again if I got inked.

Now I understand that, once upon a time, tattoos were things reserved mostly for sailors, pirates, convicts and military personnel. That time is long past. We now live in a time where some huge percentage of the population of the world sport tattoos. And we’re not all villains! In fact, most of us are perfectly reasonable, respectable, fantastic people! And many of us are even professionals, making more money than our parents ever dreamed of making!

What is it about the villain that makes them want a tattoo? Or maybe it’s the ink itself that turns people into villains? Why do I suddenly feel as though I should be robbing a bank or stealing someone’s kitten?

The tattoo will be on my left forearm. It will be low enough on my arm that a 3/4 sleeve length shirt may cover it, but likely not. I will officially have to wear long sleeves when I meet with people who wouldn’t approve of my tattoo. Who would that be?

Well that’s what I’ve spent some time thinking about tonight. Will clients choose not to work with me because of my tattoo? Will colleagues judge me or think less of me? Will I miss opportunities because of being judged, and not even know it? Am I limiting myself in some way, even a way in which I may never realize, by getting this tattoo?

The conclusion I have come to is that I don’t really WANT to work with clients or colleagues who are going to not work with me just because of my choice to have a tattoo. I am quite sure if people are put off by the tattoo, it would only be a very short matter of time before they were thoroughly offended by me in other ways as well.

I will admit though, that I am having a little bit of a difficult time crossing this line. I have always, in the past, tended toward the more reserved public face. I did this in order to provide for myself the maximum amount of opportunity in the world. This tattoo is definitely a departure from that approach. I wonder if this will lead to other departures from my perception of what constitutes societal normality.

Will I regret having the tattoo in a place that is more difficult to hide? Will people think I’m a freak for wearing a long sleeved shirt in 90 degree humid weather? I wonder how often I will even be in a situation where I’d want to hide my tattoo. Will there be some occasion where I want to wear some perfect dress, except it’s sleeveless and I have to be able to hide my tattoo? SHOULD people ever put themselves in situations where they have to hide their body art?

I’m very excited about it, too. I love seeing ink on other people, and I have four other tattoos that I don’t get to see when I’m wearing clothes. I look forward to being able to see my body art right in front of me, whenever I look down. I have heard all the standard arguments against tattoos. The most worn of the arguments is likely the most used: will you regret it (when you’re old, later, at some point, when you’re over that particular thing…)? My thought on tattoos is that you should a) always find a good artist so you don’t end up with crappy ink, b) never get them on a whim — think about what you’re wanting to get and really dwell on it for a while before doing it, c) get something that you actually really like or that has meaning to you (not some shitty flash art you found on the wall at the tattoo parlor five minutes ago), and d) don’t regret it. Even tattoos that represented something that was important to you 10 years ago, but which may not be important to you now, are still little depictions of memories.

Not that anyone asked me to defend tattoos. I’ve diverged from my original topic. Onward to the land of visible tattoos.

I should note upfront that I strongly support breastfeeding, attachment parenting and co-sleeping with children. I strongly disagree with “cry it out,” carrying babies around in their carseats or strollers all the time, and time outs.

Breastfeeding, in particular, is my pet cause. A ridiculously oversimplified history on the subject goes as follows: humans, being mammals, evolved and began reproducing. We fed our babies at our breasts just as our genetic forebears had fed their babies. A lot of time passes, and we reached a scientific age (in the late 1800s) where we decided that science was better than nature. We started choosing artificial methods to feed our children. Promotions by formula companies, kickbacks to doctors and marketing that equated nursing mothers to cows lead to a dramatic decrease in breastfeeding. The 1950s through around 1972 could be considered the breastfeeding “dark age.” In the mid 70s the La Leche League began educating people about the importance of nursing, and since that point, they’ve continued fighting an uphill battle to make breastfeeding the norm. However, there is now an entire generation of mothers who not only did NOT breastfeed, but they don’t understand why it is important. Therefore, they do not and cannot support their own daughters who DO choose to nurse their children. We are on our own to find the absolutely necessary support needed in our first weeks with our newborn nurslings.

There is plenty of information on the internet about the benefits of breastfeeding. I’ll leave you to your own Google-foo for that for now, because as much as it seems otherwise, that still isn’t the point of this post.

The point is that breastfeeding is one of those parenting issues about which I feel strongly, and I find that I actually judge people negatively if they choose not to breastfeed their children. While I also judge parents on other parenting issues, this is the one upon which I judge the most harshly. In my mind, mothers who simply choose not to nurse their children are sad and lazy. My opinion on this tends to get in the way of my friendships, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

On the one hand, I want to be a crusader for the breastfeeding cause. I feel like it is that important, and that simply ignoring that even the people closest to me are still not nursing perpetuates this issue at the most basic level! It is a tough conversation to have, and it has even made close friends of mine very uncomfortable with I have the breastfeeding conversation with them. But if we aren’t even talking to close friends about nursing, then we all fail on some fundamental level.

But what happens after that? What happens if I’ve given all the information I have to give, and offered all the support that I can possibly offer, and people still *choose* to formula feed their babies? This is where I fall short. It is devastating to me. I feel sad for the baby, like somehow I have personally failed that child (AND the mother!). And then I have a difficult time being friends with the parents, because every time they pull out the formula bottle, my heart breaks a little. I find my thoughts wandering to, “how can you possibly DO that, given all that I told you?” I don’t understand, and my opinion on the parents changes.

The issue is that I don’t WANT to necessarily end friendships with people who have different parenting techniques than mine. I want to find a way to express the things I feel passionately about regarding birthing, parenting and breastfeeding, but in a way that doesn’t leave the parents feeling like I’ve just preached to them for two hours. And then I want to find a way to deal with it when they don’t follow any of my suggestions. But that’s extraordinarily difficult for me.

Can you continue to be friends with people that do things that you consider to be barbaric? Or is that an unrealistic hope? If you write off all the people in your life that do things you think are silly, do you end up alone in the world?

For reference, here’s a link to the history of breastfeeding: http://www.breastfeeding.org/articles/alookat.html

I’m not a neat and tidy person. I’ve often considered *why* I’m not that person. I’ve tried makeup, neat and tidy perfect hair, and perfectly pressed clothes. I hate it all. So why do I still contemplate what it would be like to be perceived as someone like that? I think it is probably because I think of the neat and tidy people as having their lives together, simply because they *look* together. I had a realization recently though, as I walked barefooted through the airport. I imagined what people must be thinking about me as I walked by with my naked toes and long shorts. All kinds of critical comments came to mind. And then I realized that I was happy. I felt fantastic, NOT running through an airport hurriedly in my heals, and not worrying about my dress getting messed up as I traveled. My feet felt fantastic on the cold tile, and I felt light and relatively care-free.

I’m not a neat and tidy person, and without a whole lot of work, I never will be. I am someone who prefers to be barefooted, a little ruffled, way more laid back, and ready and able to play on the playground with my kid or have an impromptu wrestling match with my friends. Sure, that may mean I don’t get things for free because people don’t see me as “together,” and it may mean that people think I’m a freak for being barefoot in a public place. But who cares? At least I’m not in heels and feeling miserable!