So your kid has a friend with a tattoo…

I picked up the July issue of Family Circle magazine today because an article on the front page caught my eye. I’m flipping through and this huge full page ad type page for their new(ish?) parenting site, momster.com, is there. On it is a poll, “Your son or daughter brings home a new friend—with dyed hair, multiple piercings and what looks like a real tattoo. You:” and some options, none of which I really would pick. So I get online, make a log in and pipe up because hey, that’s what I do.

I just saw this in the July magazine and had to come speak up. I am a parent to five children ranging from 5 to 18, am heavily tattooed and married to a tattoo artist. I like to think I am a pretty responsible and trustworthy person, as is my husband.

I have five awesome, responsible, smart, funny, socially conscious children. One of the 18 y/o wants tattoos, one does not. The ten year old got his ears pierced at 8, when he could take care of them and not before (he had been asking for years before we allowed it). The two younger ones aren’t quite there yet. My youngest is a girl and absolutely will not have her ears pierced until she can take care of them (and yes, she has asked many times and can tell you now that she can’t have them until she can clean them).

Sometimes looks are indicative of everything, but often looks are indicative of nothing. Just because I have bright red hair and stretched ears and visible tattoos does not make me any better or worse than the person standing next to me and it makes me worry for our children, that we are teaching them to judge others at so early an age.

I hate seeing things like this. I thought we were over this. I thought we had so many more important things besides what people look like to worry about (um, hello, Gulf, giant oil spill anyone? Flooding? Earthquakes? Starving children in America?).

I understand that people judge. When I go on a job interview I want to put my best face forward. I wear my hair down over my ears. I wear long sleeves or a suit jacket. I don’t wear crocs and blue jeans and a wife beater; I wouldn’t do that if I weren’t tattooed either.

To judge a child’s “goodness” based on tattoos and/or piercings? How is that fair to the child? How is that fair to your child? Is your child a bad person for befriending someone with tattoos and/or piercings? I mean, let’s just go that extra step. If you are enough of a fuddy-duddy to think that it automatically makes for a bad kid, how good is your kid if they buddy up to the bad kid? Do you have that little faith in the parenting job you did that you feel your child is unable to judge for themselves because you didn’t teach them to well enough? And let’s touch on that for a minute. By the time your child would be bringing home a friend with body modifications I have to assume they are at least 15/16 years old, and likely at least 18 because that is the legal age to tattoo someone without parental consent. So by, let’s just call it 16, you have zero faith in your child’s ability to make an educated decision about who their friends are? I feel sorry you, if that’s the case. That is a huge parenting failure if you ask me. I may not like the friends the 18 year old brings home, but they aren’t knocking over convenience stores or doing drugs. I’m just old and don’t relate *laughs*

So getting back to me. Here I am. My ears are 3/4″ and I am visibly tattooed (pretty heavily at that) and my hair is three different shades of red. I’m not your typical 30-something, but I’m not so untypical either. I cloth diapered. I compost. I recycle. I breastfed. I babe-wore. I co-slept. I cook from scratch at least five nights a week. I schlep to ballet and tap and guitar and therapy and doctors and dentists and school. I’m not so different from you. My giant phoenix on my arm? Memorial to my sister who died a few years back. That bad ass bowling piece? A memorial for my mom who died a couple years after my sister. My ears? Started stretching them at 15. My  navel ring (the only piercing I have left, btw, that isn’t in my ears) I had done at 14. I begged for it. It’s still in. Yep, to you I am a fat, pushing middle-age, over-sized child who you probably think is clinging to her youth.

To me I am a beautiful goddess, transforming myself into who I am supposed to be right now.

I knew who I was fifteen years ago the same as I know who I am now, and will know who I am fifteen years from now; If you were afraid of who I was then you are probably still afraid of who I am now and who I will become. That makes me sad, because you are probably missing out on an amazing and loyal friend, all because you were afraid of something different. Do you really want your child to miss out on such an amazing person too, or make that person miss out on your child?