cinammon girl

Hello my loves,

Finally the tattoo shops are back open and the tattoo obsession continues! I know there are bigger problems in the world but not being able to get tattooed for pretty much all of 2020 was giving me a midlife crisis. Alas, the problem has now been solved. Also, apologies in advance for these photos because does anyone know how difficult it is to take a decent picture of the back of your arm ?? Impossible. 

Age= 23
Placement = Back of right arm
Pain = 2/10
Price = £100

As you may have seen, back in 2019 (cannot believe it was that long ago) I got Frida Kahlo tattooed on the back of my arm. This style of tattoo has become incredibly popular recently with a lot of people actually getting Frida in this style as their person of choice, so you may have seen a lot of these around. If you’ve been following me for a while now you’ll know that Lana Del Rey is one of the most special and important people to me, and so once I got Frida on the back of my arm, I knew I had a gap on the back of my other arm that I was going to fill with Lana too. I won’t go into great detail here about why Lana is so important to me because I’d essentially just be repeating myself – I explain more about it in my other 2 tattoo posts dedicated to her here and here.

Born To Die will always will be my favourite and most important era when it comes to Lana, so I knew that I wanted the portrait to resemble what she looked like back then – the iconic beehive, long lashes and flower crown. I’d been sketching out ideas in my tattoo book and knew roughly what I wanted, but hadn’t completely finalised an idea yet. I will never get a tattoo for the sake of it and so I allowed it to sit in my book for a few months, knowing that when the time was right the idea would come together and I’d be able to get the piece done.

Around a year after I’d originally had the idea, a tattoo artist whose work I really liked opened their books and was accepting new bookings on Instagram. At this time, she also posted some flash pieces that she wanted to do and as I was swiping through them, I suddenly saw everything that I’d envisioned brought to life on the page. She had drawn my Lana.

It was so crazy, it was like she’d taken the idea I’d written and drawn in my tattoo book and brought it to life and suddenly there it was, waiting for me. As it was a flash piece it was obviously a one time first come first serve thing and once it’s gone it’s gone, so I emailed her straight away and thank God the design hadn’t been taken yet, meaning it was now mine. It was meant to be (thank u universe). I have a couple of freckles within the area of the tattoo and I think it’s so cute how they’re incorporated into it, like the little freckle on her forehead. I’m super happy with how she turned out as she looks beautiful! I wish I could’ve had her a bit bigger to be more even with my Frida but due to the gap I was filling she had to be a little smaller, but overall I’m super happy with her, she’s so beautiful !! The floral headband is just gorgeous.

It’s risky to get tattoos of people in the public eye in this day and age, where cancel culture is higher than ever. There are constantly bad stories coming out, old tweets and videos resurfacing, bad decision making and endless Instagram apologies being posted left, right and centre. Lana is not at the height of these but she’s definitely no stranger to it – her main one being her controversial Instagram post where she spoke about her music not glamourising abuse despite everyone saying it did. In that post she named people (many of whom happened to be women of colour) who did similar things yet did not come under the same criticism. The world then said that she was clearly targeting women of colour in her post.

I will admit I was very confused when I saw all of the backlash she was getting for the post because when I personally read it I didn’t interpret it that way at all, so I was very confused and couldn’t understand where these people were coming from.  I think people like to try and see things that are not there because cancel culture and dragging people is a thing these days and well, it’s the internet at the end of the day. This is me talking genuinely and objectively as an outsider looking in, and not me talking as a fan and blindly choosing to ignore things.

Another example I can think of is when she did an impromptu book signing in LA during the pandemic and came under fire for wearing an aesthetic / fashionable mesh mask rather than a proper one, which (as in, the backlash she received for it) I completely agree with. It’s irresponsible to do such a thing and fashion never comes before safety and she should have known better and I was disappointed in her for that, especially since she chose not to acknowledge it. I acknowledge all of the things that famous people may or may not do and how it can affect other people and I also acknowledge that with Lana, yet I chose to still get this tattoo anyway, and that is my choice to make.

I don’t know why I felt the need to say all of this because I feel like in the grand scheme of things for the purpose of this post it’s unnecessary, but I guess I just wanted to say that I acknowledge past things and inevitable future things but I love her and I will always love her and that era will always mean the world to me, so I wanted it stamped on me forever. It’s as simple and as complicated as that I suppose. I guess I just wanted to address this in case anyone who thinks she sucks (for her past actions) happens to read this and wonders why I’d make such a decision to get a tattoo of her on me forever – I get it. I wouldn’t turn a blind eye to such things no matter who it was that had done them and I acknowledge all of it, but I still love her. We learn and grow, and next time she better wear a proper damn face mask.

All my love,

Chloe .xx

Previous Tattoo Posts
1, 2 & 3
4
5
6
7 & 8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15