Tattooed Labias: Demeaning Or Designer Art?
August 29, 2011 6 Comments
Ladies, are you into modern art? Now you can prove your dedication to the art world by letting someone tattoo your vulva. It sounds painful, but many women offered up their lady parts for the debut issue of Garage magazine.
The new magazine commissioned artists (including Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst) to design this vagina art, including one woman with a giant green butterfly tattooed to her labia. While the tattoo is beautiful, it raises some controversy (as well as many eyebrows). These women are not models, they are normal every-day women being tattooed by male artists. Is it really art, or are these men leaving their stamp on women? Can a vagina be a canvas without objectifying its owner?
The woman with the butterfly was only 23 when the tattoo was made. Many people get tattoos much younger than that, but it seems more serious below the belt. These women are making a choice, just like women who choose to get genital plastic surgery. The real question lies in whether they are choosing for themselves or to please someone else.
Who gets to decide what a perfect vagina should look like, and who gets to decide the difference between art and a misguided tattoo? Men have been getting dragons tattooed to their johns for years, and no one ever called it art. So is it art when it’s on a woman and just another dumb tattoo when it’s on a man? Is it art when the designer is a male and the canvas is a woman?
I guess beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. As long as women are choosing to do it, no one can really say it’s wrong.
Contact the author here: jennY@morningquickie.com
What?? Lol If a woman chooses to get a tattoo there how is it the mans stamp??? I have a tattoo almost there and it was my choice , wondering how people would find this demeaning
OUCH!
When people in “developing countries” do this, the UN calls it genital mutilation – how is it not mutliation when westerners do it in a consumer context??
Well it’s no taking anything away for one, but I wonder… surely having that much scar tissue on such a delicate area would numb or at least dampen sensation, right? But then, I don’t have any tatts so I’m really taking out my ass. Does anyone with tattoos care on weigh in on the likely effect of having a tattooed labia?
It’s hasn’t effected mine at all.. Though mine isn’t so far south just barely touches it.. BUT nope I haven’t lost any sensation from any of my tattoos
ouch! you are a brave girl, Kim. but why choose the nether part for a tattoo? it won’t be seen anyway!