When options run from bad to worse
Other mothers I know are talking with their 11th-grade daughters right now about SAT scores and college choices. My youngest child and I have been wrestling with a different choice:
Would I rather she get a tattoo or pierce her tongue?
It’s less my opinion than my permission she wants. She began working on me last fall, offering promises and concessions -- better grades, a neater room, no complaining when I make her do the grocery shopping -- if I’d let her get a metal bar through her tongue.
My “no” was swift and unshakable.
No amount of wheedling could alter my perspective that there’s something -- dare I say it? -- skanky about a 17-year-old displaying her wild side every time she opens her mouth.
Still, I recognize that she’s nine months away from turning 18, when she’ll be legally able to have everything pierced and anything written on her body in permanent ink without even telling me.
So I’m trying to convince myself that approving a small, dainty tattoo on a hidden body part is not a cop-out, but a prudent exercise of parental responsibility.
I accepted that motherhood would land me in strange places years ago, when I wound up at Yoni Tattoo in Tarzana, arranging for a guy named Spike -- with long green dreadlocks, a dozen rings and bars embedded in his face and tattoos covering his arms and neck -- to pierce the belly button of my oldest daughter, then not quite 16.
Back then, my daughter’s request threw me for a loop: Could my bookish, straight-arrow, risk-averse child have a wild side I didn’t know about?
Now, I don’t shock so easily.
I know tattoos are not counterculture anymore. Tattoo shops are the sixth-fastest-growing retail business in the country and the setting for two television reality shows. Even this month’s CosmoGirl -- with pre-teen idol Miley Cyrus on its cover -- has an article on how to safely get a tattoo.
In the past few weeks I’ve made the rounds of tattoo shops, from Woodland Hills to Hollywood to Venice Beach, and tried not to flinch when I watched young girls -- none with mothers in tow -- getting inked.
And I had a long talk with tattoo artist Daniel Sartor, who plies his trade at Prix in West Hollywood, near the border with Beverly Hills. Sartor has a college degree in physics, and more than 15 tattoos covering his upper body. “It can be addictive,” he warns, with a smile. That doesn’t make me feel very cheery.
For the young, he said, tattoos and unconventional piercings are a declaration of identity, independence and a sort of tribal affinity.
Almost half of all Americans between 21 and 32 have a tattoo or a piercing other than in an ear.
But Sartor knows how that can get under a mother’s skin. “I’m 48 and my mom still bitches about it,” he said. “Why do you have to mark up your body like that?”
Surveys show that the unadorned tend to find body art unsightly and consider those with it less attractive and intelligent. But men and women who have tattoos say their body art makes them feel rebellious and sexy.
Rebellious and sexy. Just what I want for my 17-year-old.
Turns out I’m off the hook for now. There’s an out for me in California law, which forbids tattooing anyone under 18, even if the parent approves. Plenty of folks obviously ignore the law; I’m wielding it now like a shield.
But my daughter’s birthday will be here soon. I’ve got nine months to persuade her to never pierce her tongue, and at least guide her to pick a tattoo that is tasteful and cute, one that won’t embarrass her when she’s 52.
Her two older sisters are stunned that I am willing to concede. After all, I’m a mom who spent months researching, pre-Internet, every possible side effect before I decided to let my babies be immunized. Later, I weighed the pros and cons of almost a dozen schools when my first-born was ready for kindergarten.
Now, I’ve learned to pick my battles. I don’t know whether it’s fatigue or the realization that my kids aren’t as fragile as I think. With every passing year and with each child, my threshold for what’s acceptable seems to drop.
I feel a twinge of envy for friends I once consoled because their kids sneaked off and got tattooed or pierced without telling them. The shock of discovery felt to them like betrayal. But at least they were spared my the mental back-and-forth over what my decision says about me.
Am I giving in to a wayward child or honoring her expression of identity? Who do I fear will be unfairly judged -- my tattooed kid or her permissive mom?
Before you have children, it’s easy enough to say what kind of parent you’ll be. That’s because you don’t know what kind of children you’ll get and what exactly they’ll need from you to grow into the best people they can be.
So I’m listening now as my daughter talks about her ideal tattoo. How big? Where on her body would it be? It’s been an interesting peek inside her head. I’m relieved she isn’t asking for a martini glass, a bloody skull, or a marijuana leaf.
Her tattoo choice is taken from a 200-year-old William Wordsworth poem, “Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” It’s a phrase as beautifully complex and oblique as she:
“Haunted for ever by the eternal mind.”
And to her mother, the message feels right, at this time, for this child.
Even if it winds up stenciled across her belly, in 3/8 -inch letters, in permanent ink.
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