Most teenage girls ask for their belly button to be pierced, or their nose or their lip. Not me, when I was a teenager all I wanted was a tattoo. Something about them was beautiful for me. I finally got my first one when I was 19, and ever since then I have been adding to my collection. I currently have 5. With tattoos come many different risks that I try to always inform people of. Going to a tattoo parlor alone is a lot of work in deciding whether they are clean enough, or good enough for getting your tattoo done by a professional. You can’t even imagine the risks that that are presented when you go to someone who is not a professional or let your friends tattoo you. Homemade tattoos are very risky, not to mention don’t always look the best when they are done.

You may think “Oh man, this is just something my mother tells me to scare me out of getting a tattoo! How can it be harmful?!”

I guess the best way to explain this is to give you my own experience with homemade tattoos and tattoo guns.  Most home made guns are made out of things lying around.  Electric toothbrushes, electric guitar strings and propelling pencils are just a few of the items. With these things you can’t control how far into the skin the ink can go, like with a professional gun and needle, and many times you’ll find people who get home made tattoos get very serious infections under the skin.

Not to mention how incredibly painful they are. Yes, tattoos are painful, but it is NOTHING at all compared to the pain of a homemade tattoo. If you don’t deal well with pain, this should be more than enough to draw you away from the idea of a homemade tattoo. If you think “Oh, I can handle pain, how is this a big deal?”

Well, let’s just go back a little bit. Remember how I told you that most guns are made from things lying around the house? Well, because of this the guns usually can’t be taken apart, so each time the gun tattoos a different person, it’s going into the skin and getting contact with many different kinds of peoples blood, blood that could be infected and blood that will come in contact with your blood.

Disgusting right? You know how when they told us in Drug awareness classes that you should never share heroin needles because of how disgusting and how easy it is to get diseases? This is really no different; you are sharing the same needle.  Even with professional tattoo shops they have to stress changing the ink after each person, or changing the needle after each person. The chances of getting AIDS, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, tetanus, tuberculosis and about any other blood-borne disease becomes really high while you are getting a tattoo. Just think of how many times the needle has to pulse though the skin.

These things alone should scare you away from homemade tattoos, as well as the fact that usually cheap ink is used, also adding the possibility of infection and having an allergic reaction to the list of horrible things as well, that and from the cheap ink as well as the lack of professionalism, in the end you are stuck with a cheap looking tattoo-Forever. Don’t say “Oh, I could just get it removed by surgery.” I think people forget how expensive it is to surgically remove a tattoo, or how painful it is.

If you really want a tattoo, really badly, talk to your parents. Discuss with them your reasons as to why you want a tattoo and spend months and months researching information about getting your tattoo, such as visiting different tattoo shops (making sure they change ink and needles after each use!) and seeing what artist has the artistic ability for your tattoo. Your tattoo is on you for the rest of your life. It should be something you cherish and love, not something you look back and are ashamed of.

Remember, it’s your body and you should value it!!

Article submitted by Jamie Herkel who had her own home-made tattoo and regretted it.

More information on tattoos can be found:

General Info on tattoos

Problems of tattoos

Tattoos: Risks and Precautions You need to know first