Heart on Your Sleeve
The significance of tattoos in queer spaces.
Story and photos by Cierra Coppock
Tesla Kawakami and Emma Bjornsrud sat together in Tesla’s apartment on the evening of Emma’s 20th birthday. Golden light spilled through the windows as Tesla carefully poked an ink covered needle into a tender patch of skin, right under Emma’s armpit.
Each painful stick of the needle left behind a dot, and soon an image of a tiny sprout came into fruition as Kasey Musgraves played in the background.
Stick-and-pokes are a method of tattooing that uses only a single needle rather than a whole machine. While some professionals opt for this method, many stick-and-poke tattoos are done in people’s houses between close friends, like Tesla and Emma.
It’s not a unique experience for two young, queer friends to give each other tattoos.
Tesla’s first tattoo was done at their ex-girlfriend’s house at age 17. CJ Malone, a self-proclaimed “dyke tattooer” in Bellingham, boasts a thigh full of monthiversary stick-and-poke tattoos she shares with a high school sweetheart. Western student and stick-and-poke artist Gale Steck poked “OK” into their thigh at the age of 16. Seattle-based, queer tattoo artist Silver Fawkes gave their first tattoo while on a first date, sipping a late-night whiskey.
Tattoos for queer folks are often relational contracts, permanently bonding the tattooer and the tattooed in a way that is more than just visual.
The DIY nature of these experiences heavily evokes the ideals and values of the punk subculture of the 1970s; a means of circumnavigating the mainstream and asserting independence over one’s actions.
Chris Vargas, a queer visual artist, professor and founder of the Museum of Trans Hirstory and Art views his tattoos as symbol of his own bodily autonomy.
“It becomes a way to signify, externally, commitment to this self-determination and self-actualization,” he said. “It’s a physical relationship to your body and identity.”
Tattoos are often significant in terms of their owners’ queerness, Silver said, “I think growing up, never fitting in, you’re never just accepted as you are. So, it’s really ownership of one’s body.”
Tattoos as Embracing Queerness
The term queer is an intentionally vague umbrella term encompassing a multitude of nonconforming ways of living. The nebulous nature of this word allows for each individual to prescribe meaning according to their own personal identity.
Chris — the visual artist and Western professor — explained the term as an opposition to normal: “[It’s an] expansive identity term that can encompass so many non-normative ways of sexuality and living.”
To CJ, “queer” is an all-encompassing umbrella term people use to articulate their sexual identity and gender expression.
“It’s also super vague on purpose, because sometimes people want to be vague in their identity. I identify as a butch lesbian,” CJ explained. “Butch” is a term used to identify non-straight females with masculine appearence and manners. “I love it. I love that people can choose to not be super perceived by using that word. To me, my butchness and my masculinity is that. That’s my version of queerness.”
For others, like Gale, their queerness governs the entire lens through which they view their life.
“Queer is challenging the human notion of trying to divide things into neat, logical categories,” they said. “[It’s] saying, ‘No, there’s a spectrum on everything and that is how I’m choosing to exist — outside of your logical, binomial nomenclature and inside my own fluid way of living.’”
Queerness is not finite. While some people see it as a way to articulate their identity, others see it more as a way of living, like Silver.
“Queer isn’t really about who you fuck. It’s about how we love people,” they said.
Tattoos as History
Both tattoos and queerness have become more readily accepted by mainstream culture, especially in liberal areas like Bellingham. However, this wasn’t always the case, and still isn’t in many parts of the world.
According to Samuel M. Steward, English teacher, writer and tattoo artist born in 1909, there were only few openly gay people with tattoos before the 1950s. During this time, members of the LGBTQ+ community were fired from their jobs or even arrested as a result of the public villainization of queer relationships, which lead to many covert ways of signaling sexual orientation.
At the same time, tattoo trends among queer people drastically shifted in 1954 after the release of the movie “A Wild One.”
“[“A Wild One”] is the original motorcycle film,” Steward said in his book “Bad Boys & Tough Tattoos: A Social History of the Tattoo with Gangs, Sailors, and Street-Corner Punks.” “It seemed to crystallize, or release, the obscure and long-hidden feelings of many homosexuals.”
While not overtly queer, many gay men identified with this film, as it was unintentionally very homoerotic.
Suddenly, tattoo shops were filled with motorcyclists and an excessive amount of leather. With it came a newfound queer clientele that utilized tattoos as a means of symbolizing masculinity.
“These leather guys began to get symbolically violent tattoos — black panthers crawling up the arms, or daggers or snakes or skulls or combinations of all the symbols of death, violence, sexuality and masculinity,” Steward recalled in his book.
As a direct result of this collective shift in the queer community, butch lesbians of the 50s and 60s began adorning their wrists with nautical stars, drawing from the traditional, masculine, Sailor Jerry aesthetic. Not only could these tattoos be hidden under a watch, but they acted as a signal to other lesbians.
This notion of identification remained pervasive in the queer community, a secret lexicon to others who seek out kindred spirts.
On the other hand, some people choose a much more conspicuous route with their tattoos, boldly adorning their bodies as an act of ownership over one’s identity.
Many queer men get a pink triangle tattoo to pay homage to those who came before them who could not openly and proudly express their identity. Originally used in Nazi Germany to mark gay prisoners, the pink triangle was later adopted by gay men and the 1980 ACT-UP AIDS awareness campaign, powerfully reclaiming the symbol.
During the countercultural movements in the second half of the 20th century, queerness became more widely recognized and accepted by many subculture groups. These communities embraced queerness, shaping subcultures into what we know them as today.
As a teenager in the mid 90s, Chris recalls, “I was really always drawn to misfits and outcasts, punks and weirdos. These are my people. This is how I love. Alternative communities … always used tattoos as a marker, or affinity, to a certain subculture or community.”
Tattoos as Messages
While the use of tattoos as covert signals is becoming less and less important, tattoos still function as a means of communication in the queer community.
The physical altering of appearance is an extension of pride felt towards identity, and an external representation of the othering experienced internally. Silver explained that, to them, “It’s about having choices and having autonomy. But it’s definitely wanting to be perceived as ‘other.’”
Gale takes this point even further.
“We’re already vulnerable,” they said. “We don’t have the option to fit in, so we might as well wear our hearts on our sleeves, to put what we love on our bodies for the world to see.”
Heavily tattooed in bold, traditional styles CJ said, “The way that people treat me when I go to other places that aren’t as accepting of tattoos is, I don’t know, just bad. They think I’m weird. And to me, it’s funny, because I don’t care. I love myself. I live for my own identity.”
This rejection of normality is inherently queer, explained Silver.
“Being a heavily tattooed person is saying, ‘I reject! I’m not part of your system,’” Silver said. “I’m not trying to fit in. I reject normality and heteronormativity. My tattoos are pretty masculine, you know? And the placement is masculine and being a heavily tattooed person makes men less interested in me, for sure. So, it’s definitely queering.”
Tattoos as Gender Expression
For CJ, adorning her body with masculine, traditional tattoos was stepping into her butch identity and embracing the masculine side of herself.
“I think that butchness is inherently gender nonconforming, not on the binary,” she said.
Similarly, recent Western graduate Skylar Tibbetts sees her tattoos as a means of separating herself from the male gaze.
“Having tattoos in masculine places, but also having a lot of feminine characteristics really grounds me in my gender expression,” Skylar explained. “A lot of my frustration with gender comes out of being perceived as a woman. Which is painful because I really love that part of myself. So, there’s this cognitive dissonance of wanting to be a woman, but not in the way that men perceive me as a woman.”
Tattoos as Ritual
Tesla and Emma’s stick-and-poke experience reflects a core aspect of queer tattooing. The ritual of queer tattooing provides safety and intimacy within an act that is inherently painful.
“I think queer tattooing and younger people in general have made tattooing a much more ritualistic and intimate thing,” CJ explained. “You’re trusting someone with your body. And I think that should be sacred.”
“That’s why I picked opening a private studio rather than trying to work at a shop, because I wanted to offer a safe space for people to feel like they can be vulnerable and have that intimate setting,” CJ said.
In his youth, Chris was tattooed twice by friends. It was about sharing the experience.
“I liked their art, and also I want to spend some time with them in that process,” he said. “It’s such a queer way to approach it because I could have just been friends with them. But I wanted to support their work and pay them. I wanted that experience.”
Almost two years after Tesla poked a small plant into Emma’s side, the two friends booked an appointment with CJ to get matching tattoos of Frog and Toad from the beloved children’s books.
The three of them sat together in CJ’s small, yet inviting studio in downtown Bellingham, supporting each other through the inevitable pain that comes with tattoos. When talking to Emma and Tesla about their appointment with CJ, their eyes glow as they reminisce on the experience. It’s clear how much each of them cherishes the art that physically bonds their friendship.
