Covering Up Tattoos

Covering Up Tattoos


Lots of people nowadays have tattoos.
Lots of people nowadays
feel they have to hold onto jobs
for various reasons, such as money,
health insurance, mortgages or rent,
parental approval, debt
(student loan and credit card),
social status, child support,
sense of purpose,
contributing to society,
impressing sexual conquests, etc..
Lots of jobs have dress codes
in which it is explicitly stated
that employees should not have
visible tattoos. Somehow,
it is considered unprofessional,
even though lots of people have them,
including people with money
and pop stars with major record label deals.

And in our jobs they want us to “have fun,”
“be part of a team,” which means
identifying with the corporate culture,
which means not doing anything
to freak out the straight white people.

For some people getting tattoos
is the alternative to buying jewelry
from Tiffany’s. Hear me out.
Instead of commemorating
momentous life events
by purchasing jewelry,
they get tattoos.
Instead of buying something
to wear, they mark a life’s
accomplishment, trial and tribulation,
torturous and arduous lesson learned,
brain- and earth-shaking love,
by marking their skin permanently
with a tattoo.

But tattoos they are not allowed
to show at the workplace.
Despite all the policies and parties
and retreats and meetings where
the purpose is to make you feel
like you’re part of the team,
part of a beneficial gift
to society, in truth,
they don’t want to see who
you really are. They don’t want
you to show who you really are.
They want you to cover up
your tattoos. The symbols
of you that you felt so strongly
about that you had to have them
tattooed into your skin forever,
or until you revise them
with more tattoo art,
you have to hide.


Some cover them up with
band-aids or long-sleeved
shirts. But it’s a physical
metaphor. Even though
I don’t have tattoos,
I know I have to keep
myself covered up,
behind wraps, never to be
revealed, despite jovial coaxing.
I can’t show the mile-posts of my lives,
the accomplished goals, the life-changing loves.
They don’t really want to see me.
They don’t want to see my tattoos.
They don’t want to see the events
and work and sorrow and love
and striving and heartbreak
that made me who I am.
They want to see the me
who can be marketed,
who can be sold,
and that me doesn’t
have a history, a personality,
a unique identity. That me
doesn’t have tattoos.