Tesseracts

I haven't seen a thread that focuses on gender-specific advice, information-sharing and support for the wonderful ladies around here. Little gems are randomly sprinkled here-and-there within other threads. I thought it would be a nice idea to collect that type of stuff in one place. Questions like, "what do you do about wearing a bra after getting a tattoo?" and "does it really hurt more to get a tattoo the week before and during your period?" And the empowering stuff like the wonderful thread about using tattoos to feel better about your body - especially the delightful discussion of beautifying the horrendous "batwings."
In addition to starting new topics here, when we find relevant nuggets of info elsewhere (I'm kicking myself for not making bookmarks of them), we can add those links here so we don't have to repeat everything or we can refer back to existing stuff.
About responding to existing content: When you find good stuff elsewhere, if it's part of a well-encapsulated or dedicated thread, it would be best to reply over in that thread so content is together (and put a link here if there isn't one already). If the good stuff you find is randomly spread through a larger or unrelated thread, then include the link to the first post where the good stuff starts, and respond here so your new info doesn't get lost over in an unrelated thread.
The boys are welcome, too, you know, because anything related to boobs and bras and the lack of bras surely has universal appeal, etc.
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So I'll start with the period question - does it really hurt more the week of and during your period? Have you dealt with it in any special way...rather than praying to the menopause gods or demanding a hysterectomy just to get more tattoos? :D
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Here's the start of a thread about bras and tattoos in the bra area: http://www.lastsparrowtattoo.com/forum/tattoo-after-care/32-best-post-tattoo-care-page10.html#post51734

Wow.
When I made the original thread, I had no idea that it would turn out to be a big debate; I was thinking that it would be therapeutic for myself and for anyone else that had experienced something like that, to share the anecdote, and encourage others to share theirs.
About speaking up- that would have been great, if I had felt safe to do so. I think that now that I am 12 years older, more mature, more confident, and more assertive, I would have -at the very least- told him afterwards that I didn't appreciate that bullshit thank you very much. The situation I was in though, as a young woman, alone in a tattoo shop with a guy named 'Graham' who worked at 'Graham's Tattoo Studio' (now long closed), I didn't feel okay. I felt afraid. So I didn't. Thank you to those that got that, and wrote eloquent responses.
It's all very well to say that I should be tougher, or stronger, or more assertive, or be able to fly, or whatever... but I was who I was, and I think that tattoos should be for everyone. I don't think there should be certain class of people who tattooing should be limited to, e.g. those who can 'take it like a man' or whatever, although I understand that attitude, because some women have had to fight long and hard to be treated as equals in a male-dominated field.
Silence never equals consent when there is a power imbalance. The person in the more powerful position is responsible to ensure that their behaviour is welcome. This guy could have made a number of jokes, even some lewd jokes, that were not about my body, which I may not have enjoyed but would not have been offended by.
The 'large cohesive upper arm tattoo' (@HaydenRose ;) ) that I am getting in a week or so is being done by a professional who I have met and had a lengthy consultation with, who works with others in an open studio, and comes highly recommended. I have a bit more tattoo nous now. But for those young ladies (and men) who go into a studio and point to something and say, "I want that one", or with less sense who get upside down tattoos, or pop culture references that will disappear in 5 minutes, or whatever, I want them to have an enjoyable, safe experience that they can think of fondly and get lasered off later.

Here is my bleeding moon. I posted this a long time ago. Matt Brotka in Richmond, Virginia, but that fine gentleman is now at Left Hand Black in sunny San Diego.

No tattoo shop with self respect refuses to post any of the shop's own work on their website.No thanks.No.

Where is the downvote button?!

I don't want to sound like I'm siding with the victim blaming "silence is consent" school of thought, but I have to say, I'm all for women speaking up for themselves even if their husband/brother/whatever isn't around. Most everyone will back down if you assert yourself with confidence. If you don't want to speak directly to the tattooer, that's understandable, but the manager probably deserves to hear about it. Or, you could get up and leave, and contact the police. Hell, even venting on a tattoo forum is greatly preferable to keeping it to yourself.

I'm going to post some more pictures I found, and when I have time I'll try to find out who made all of these so I can credit them.
I've been doing some research on kitsune since I decided they were cool tattoos. Some are considered servants of the deity Inari, and are considered more trustworthy than wild foxes. According to Japanese tales all foxes are capable of magic, however, and wild foxes can be both good or evil. Here are some links about foxes in case anyone wants them.
Kitsune, Kumiho, Huli Jing, Fox - Fox spirits in Asia, and Asian fox spirits in the West
Kitsune Lore
Kitsune
Kitsune Page - Myths and Ancient Stories - Japanese
Kesa thru Kodansha
Main/Kitsune - Television Tropes & Idioms
I'm thinking of going down to the NYC tattoo convention to try to get this done. The website says the Horitoshi family will be there. I don't know how easy it will be to get something like this done though, I've never gotten a tattoo in my life and I've never been to a tattoo convention.

I'm going to post some more pictures I found, and when I have time I'll try to find out who made all of these so I can credit them.
I've been doing some research on kitsune since I decided they were cool tattoos. Some are considered servants of the deity Inari, and are considered more trustworthy than wild foxes. According to Japanese tales all foxes are capable of magic, however, and wild foxes can be both good or evil. Here are some links about foxes in case anyone wants them.
Kitsune, Kumiho, Huli Jing, Fox - Fox spirits in Asia, and Asian fox spirits in the West
Kitsune Lore
Kitsune
Kitsune Page - Myths and Ancient Stories - Japanese
Kesa thru Kodansha
Main/Kitsune - Television Tropes & Idioms
I'm thinking of going down to the NYC tattoo convention to try to get this done. The website says the Horitoshi family will be there. I don't know how easy it will be to get something like this done though, I've never gotten a tattoo in my life and I've never been to a tattoo convention.

Ha! Alright then, here's my RH Wells from last year (march-ish I think).

Per Graeme's suggestion, my entry into the Ron Henry Wells Tattoo of the Month contest:

This is all your fault, by the way. The collective you.

I feel that's part of the problem of you totally not getting it - how she reacted or didn't react to the sexual comment during a session is not up for our judgement! She was sharing her experience and handled it the best way she knew at the time. Your comment that "silence is consent" seriously gave innuendo that a person is asking for more comments if she doesn't say anything. Everyone is different, sure, maybe you would have said something, but stop getting all judge-y to those that don't. It's complicated, especially because it is sexual in nature and the person on the receiving end of the comment was in a vulnerable state.
I think all woman have had some kind of sexual comment at some point in their lives. I know I have, however, I don't have a blanket policy how I react - it depends, where, the context, the comment, the situation. I've never had sexually slanted comment during a tattoo session and I've been getting tattooed since the early 90's. So if shit like that is happening in a shop, that is what's wrong, not how the woman responds to it.

I feel like you are really missing the point.

What a jackass.

Just saw this on facebook.
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www.facebook.com/HorribleTattoos
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The picture is not from the page I linked, it's from a different page.

@Zillah that's awful! I hope your tattoo experiences are much more comfortable and enjoyable from now on!

I think websites like this are literally written by robots. They probably have some computer program that finds popular search terms and constructs paragraphs about them along with some random images. Kind of sad but also hilarious.

I've been overweight most of my life. It's one of the reasons I've avoided getting tattoos until now. For years I was self conscious about anything that could draw eyes to me. I'm less insecure about that now. Although I'm still going to avoid getting tattoos on the larger areas until I lose weight. If I wasn't planning to lose weight I wouldn't worry about it, but I don't want skin shrinking to wreck things.
Despite being American, there aren't a lot of fat people around where I live. There aren't a lot of people with visible tattoos either. I went to Disney World for the first time in my life recently, and it made me feel less weird. I saw plenty of overweight people with tattoos, and some of them were actually good. In line for a bus I saw a couple composed of a fat girl and a skinny guy. Both of them had tattoos, and the skinny guy had overweight pin up girls tattooed on his legs.
I haven't had a tattoo for very long but I think I'm experiencing the same thing I've seen others describe in this thread, I care more about my health now that I have one. It's weird, it's like by putting something I value on my leg, my leg matters more. I never really understood why I wanted a tattoo until I actually got one, now I think I know why. When you put something in your skin forever, it's not only something that looks cool, it's a part of yourself.
Do you know what I think the internet needs more of? Pictures of large people with tattoos. Here is a picture I took of myself to see what my tattoo looks like from a distance. It's not a good photo and the tattoo isn't healed yet, but I think it proves the world isn't going to fall apart if a large leg has a large tattoo on it. And here is me actually getting the tattoo, picture was taken by Fala.

I've been overweight most of my life. It's one of the reasons I've avoided getting tattoos until now. For years I was self conscious about anything that could draw eyes to me. I'm less insecure about that now. Although I'm still going to avoid getting tattoos on the larger areas until I lose weight. If I wasn't planning to lose weight I wouldn't worry about it, but I don't want skin shrinking to wreck things.
Despite being American, there aren't a lot of fat people around where I live. There aren't a lot of people with visible tattoos either. I went to Disney World for the first time in my life recently, and it made me feel less weird. I saw plenty of overweight people with tattoos, and some of them were actually good. In line for a bus I saw a couple composed of a fat girl and a skinny guy. Both of them had tattoos, and the skinny guy had overweight pin up girls tattooed on his legs.
I haven't had a tattoo for very long but I think I'm experiencing the same thing I've seen others describe in this thread, I care more about my health now that I have one. It's weird, it's like by putting something I value on my leg, my leg matters more. I never really understood why I wanted a tattoo until I actually got one, now I think I know why. When you put something in your skin forever, it's not only something that looks cool, it's a part of yourself.
Do you know what I think the internet needs more of? Pictures of large people with tattoos. Here is a picture I took of myself to see what my tattoo looks like from a distance. It's not a good photo and the tattoo isn't healed yet, but I think it proves the world isn't going to fall apart if a large leg has a large tattoo on it. And here is me actually getting the tattoo, picture was taken by Fala.

I think websites like this are literally written by robots. They probably have some computer program that finds popular search terms and constructs paragraphs about them along with some random images. Kind of sad but also hilarious.

I've been overweight most of my life. It's one of the reasons I've avoided getting tattoos until now. For years I was self conscious about anything that could draw eyes to me. I'm less insecure about that now. Although I'm still going to avoid getting tattoos on the larger areas until I lose weight. If I wasn't planning to lose weight I wouldn't worry about it, but I don't want skin shrinking to wreck things.
Despite being American, there aren't a lot of fat people around where I live. There aren't a lot of people with visible tattoos either. I went to Disney World for the first time in my life recently, and it made me feel less weird. I saw plenty of overweight people with tattoos, and some of them were actually good. In line for a bus I saw a couple composed of a fat girl and a skinny guy. Both of them had tattoos, and the skinny guy had overweight pin up girls tattooed on his legs.
I haven't had a tattoo for very long but I think I'm experiencing the same thing I've seen others describe in this thread, I care more about my health now that I have one. It's weird, it's like by putting something I value on my leg, my leg matters more. I never really understood why I wanted a tattoo until I actually got one, now I think I know why. When you put something in your skin forever, it's not only something that looks cool, it's a part of yourself.
Do you know what I think the internet needs more of? Pictures of large people with tattoos. Here is a picture I took of myself to see what my tattoo looks like from a distance. It's not a good photo and the tattoo isn't healed yet, but I think it proves the world isn't going to fall apart if a large leg has a large tattoo on it. And here is me actually getting the tattoo, picture was taken by Fala.

I've been overweight most of my life. It's one of the reasons I've avoided getting tattoos until now. For years I was self conscious about anything that could draw eyes to me. I'm less insecure about that now. Although I'm still going to avoid getting tattoos on the larger areas until I lose weight. If I wasn't planning to lose weight I wouldn't worry about it, but I don't want skin shrinking to wreck things.
Despite being American, there aren't a lot of fat people around where I live. There aren't a lot of people with visible tattoos either. I went to Disney World for the first time in my life recently, and it made me feel less weird. I saw plenty of overweight people with tattoos, and some of them were actually good. In line for a bus I saw a couple composed of a fat girl and a skinny guy. Both of them had tattoos, and the skinny guy had overweight pin up girls tattooed on his legs.
I haven't had a tattoo for very long but I think I'm experiencing the same thing I've seen others describe in this thread, I care more about my health now that I have one. It's weird, it's like by putting something I value on my leg, my leg matters more. I never really understood why I wanted a tattoo until I actually got one, now I think I know why. When you put something in your skin forever, it's not only something that looks cool, it's a part of yourself.
Do you know what I think the internet needs more of? Pictures of large people with tattoos. Here is a picture I took of myself to see what my tattoo looks like from a distance. It's not a good photo and the tattoo isn't healed yet, but I think it proves the world isn't going to fall apart if a large leg has a large tattoo on it. And here is me actually getting the tattoo, picture was taken by Fala.

I had a painting instructor who does really nice paintings. He's also a tattoo artist. However his tattoos don't look like his paintings at all. There must be a reason for that. Here are his paintings and here are his tattoos. They're different styles and they emphasize different things.
I love paint and I love the way paint looks, but human skin isn't like paper or canvas. I don't think it's just a matter of fading, some things look better on a flat computer screen than they look on an arm.
It seems to be that the best way to get something that looks like a painting on your skin, is to find a good tebori artist. For example, this bird by Horimasa has really nice subtle color transitions, more like a painting than like most tattoos. I also like how well white comes out with tebori.
Dotwork tattoos also look kind of like drawings or illustrations to me, here is one by Valentin Hirsch.

I've been overweight most of my life. It's one of the reasons I've avoided getting tattoos until now. For years I was self conscious about anything that could draw eyes to me. I'm less insecure about that now. Although I'm still going to avoid getting tattoos on the larger areas until I lose weight. If I wasn't planning to lose weight I wouldn't worry about it, but I don't want skin shrinking to wreck things.
Despite being American, there aren't a lot of fat people around where I live. There aren't a lot of people with visible tattoos either. I went to Disney World for the first time in my life recently, and it made me feel less weird. I saw plenty of overweight people with tattoos, and some of them were actually good. In line for a bus I saw a couple composed of a fat girl and a skinny guy. Both of them had tattoos, and the skinny guy had overweight pin up girls tattooed on his legs.
I haven't had a tattoo for very long but I think I'm experiencing the same thing I've seen others describe in this thread, I care more about my health now that I have one. It's weird, it's like by putting something I value on my leg, my leg matters more. I never really understood why I wanted a tattoo until I actually got one, now I think I know why. When you put something in your skin forever, it's not only something that looks cool, it's a part of yourself.
Do you know what I think the internet needs more of? Pictures of large people with tattoos. Here is a picture I took of myself to see what my tattoo looks like from a distance. It's not a good photo and the tattoo isn't healed yet, but I think it proves the world isn't going to fall apart if a large leg has a large tattoo on it. And here is me actually getting the tattoo, picture was taken by Fala.

I've been overweight most of my life. It's one of the reasons I've avoided getting tattoos until now. For years I was self conscious about anything that could draw eyes to me. I'm less insecure about that now. Although I'm still going to avoid getting tattoos on the larger areas until I lose weight. If I wasn't planning to lose weight I wouldn't worry about it, but I don't want skin shrinking to wreck things.
Despite being American, there aren't a lot of fat people around where I live. There aren't a lot of people with visible tattoos either. I went to Disney World for the first time in my life recently, and it made me feel less weird. I saw plenty of overweight people with tattoos, and some of them were actually good. In line for a bus I saw a couple composed of a fat girl and a skinny guy. Both of them had tattoos, and the skinny guy had overweight pin up girls tattooed on his legs.
I haven't had a tattoo for very long but I think I'm experiencing the same thing I've seen others describe in this thread, I care more about my health now that I have one. It's weird, it's like by putting something I value on my leg, my leg matters more. I never really understood why I wanted a tattoo until I actually got one, now I think I know why. When you put something in your skin forever, it's not only something that looks cool, it's a part of yourself.
Do you know what I think the internet needs more of? Pictures of large people with tattoos. Here is a picture I took of myself to see what my tattoo looks like from a distance. It's not a good photo and the tattoo isn't healed yet, but I think it proves the world isn't going to fall apart if a large leg has a large tattoo on it. And here is me actually getting the tattoo, picture was taken by Fala.

I've been overweight most of my life. It's one of the reasons I've avoided getting tattoos until now. For years I was self conscious about anything that could draw eyes to me. I'm less insecure about that now. Although I'm still going to avoid getting tattoos on the larger areas until I lose weight. If I wasn't planning to lose weight I wouldn't worry about it, but I don't want skin shrinking to wreck things.
Despite being American, there aren't a lot of fat people around where I live. There aren't a lot of people with visible tattoos either. I went to Disney World for the first time in my life recently, and it made me feel less weird. I saw plenty of overweight people with tattoos, and some of them were actually good. In line for a bus I saw a couple composed of a fat girl and a skinny guy. Both of them had tattoos, and the skinny guy had overweight pin up girls tattooed on his legs.
I haven't had a tattoo for very long but I think I'm experiencing the same thing I've seen others describe in this thread, I care more about my health now that I have one. It's weird, it's like by putting something I value on my leg, my leg matters more. I never really understood why I wanted a tattoo until I actually got one, now I think I know why. When you put something in your skin forever, it's not only something that looks cool, it's a part of yourself.
Do you know what I think the internet needs more of? Pictures of large people with tattoos. Here is a picture I took of myself to see what my tattoo looks like from a distance. It's not a good photo and the tattoo isn't healed yet, but I think it proves the world isn't going to fall apart if a large leg has a large tattoo on it. And here is me actually getting the tattoo, picture was taken by Fala.