Tattoo You

I got a tattoo yesterday. It's only my second one, and I don't plan on any more than three. I like three. In less than 20 years, I don't want to be that 55 year-old chick in line at the grocery store rockin' a tube top and cut-offs with all the tacky tatts she got back in her 20s and 30s, like the tramp stamp and the ankle bracelet and the top-of-the-foot sun with a face and the back-of-the-neck butterfly that's seen its better days. She's waaaaay too tan and has a box of Marlboro Reds and 12-pack of Coors Light under her arm. her hair is an unnatural shade of reddish-brown.* She's delusional, and since she feels like she's still 25, she dresses and acts accordingly. But we all feel like we're still 25. There comes a point in time that we have to just man up and accept some things.

*this character in no way represents any real persons, here, there, or anywhere.

So yeah I don't want to be her. I think tattoos are beautiful and sexy but I like to keep it clean and simple. I want to be able to look like a classy broad when I have to put on a little black dress for my book-signing party or when I walk the Red Carpet for Izabel's first Oscar or Beck's first Grammy. That's just me. I do still rock tube tops, and as long as a decent bra and enough gym visits and possibly some future purchased imitation boobs prevent the underarm-overflow, I'll keep wearing them. For a while. Shit, as long as I keep the arms in shape I could rock tube tops forever with the faux-boobs. Who knows. But eventually, I'm just gonna feel like a dumbass. It's like how we stopped wearing crop-tops after turning 29, no matter how flat the stomach. It's just good manners. Forty isn't so far away, but it's the new 30 so I figure I have a few years left for tubes, thanks to hot biotches like Jennifer Aniston and Cami Diaz and Courtney Cox giving us Cougars a good name. Although you're hard to measure up to, we owe you guys one for keeping 30-and 40-somethings potentially in the "hot" cateogory.

But anyway, about the tattoo. I decided to have it placed on my left shoulder, opposite my other one, a plain black Ohm. I had a list of several little plain black symbols I had wanted for a while, but I spontaneously (cuz that's how I roll) decided on something altogether different. With color and everythang. One of the symbols was gratitude and one was change, and when searching symbols for those words I came across the Cherry Blossom. The Chinese meaning for the tree/flower represents feminine beauty and sexuality, and sometimes independence. So, I'm a girly-girl, I'm all about some prettiness and sexiness and newfound independence(change). Rediscovery.

The Japanese meaning is much more profound. For them, the flower, whose petals fall within a week of blooming, represents the fact that all things are temporary, fleeting, ephemeral. Life is, or whatever that's happening in your life undoubtedly is, so some people see the cherry blossom attoo as a way to remind themselves to value the good that's in their life right now(gratitude). It can also represent the death of something, or just something that's short-lived. My tattoo guy said, something that's so beautiful but so brief. That's it. Beauty is fleeting, happiness is fleeting, everything is fleeting. This specific time in my life is fleeting. So my cherry blossom will remind me of this time in my life - and when I'm the 55 year-old unsuccessfully tryin to rock the tube top - it will remind me that I've got my stories to tell.

However, with my Anne Taylor Loft tube-top, I'll be wearing some awesome white linen Columbian drug-lord pants and have a bottle of Stag's Leap cabernet instead of Coors light and a pack of Altoids instead of ciggies in my hand. That's just how I roll.

Cuz i'll be classy, yo.

;)

~R