“Every time I look at it, it [reminds me to] breathe, relax. I just got it to calm me down,” said senior Alexa Powell of the light blue tattoo of the word “breathe” written on her wrist.
Powell is one of many students and a few teachers who have one or more tattoos.
Students get tattoos for many different reasons. Like Powell, senior Mary Rizkalla got a tattoo as a reminder to herself.
“It says ‘just the way I am,’ but I got it because I experienced something really hard in my life and it was just something to remind me to stay strong,” Rizkalla said.
Junior Landon McCabe doesn’t have a tattoo at the moment, but says he is definitely planning on getting one or more in the future, and he even has a few ideas in mind.
“Most of them are going to be tribute tattoos like to bands; I just don’t want anything generic like crosses,” McCabe said.
Although McCabe believes that having a tattoo may affect a future job interview, he still thinks that he will most likely get visible tattoos.
Junior Nathan Sandborg has a design on his arm, but it has a special meaning to him for an unusual reason—he helped design it.
“I just looked at a couple different tribal designs online and used a couple different things and added it together to make something that represents my last name,” Sandborg said.
Although most of the tattoos seen around Northwood are on student bodies, dance teacher Leah Smith also has a tattoo, one that serves as a daily reminder to herself.
“I read my students The Sneetches every year, which is a book by Dr. Seuss,” Smith said. “It’s a story all about acceptance and self love and self worth. So I got the Sneetch stars on my foot to kind of remind me that I need to accept the things that I can’t change and accept the things that I already have and just be happy.”
While many students have tattoos, senior Anna Wall takes the art to a whole new level for students—she is a tattoo artist.
“I learned it from my dad, just watching,” Wall said. “[The] first one that I ever did was a rose and it was so good, the best thing I’ve done in my entire life, so I was pretty proud of myself when I got that done.”
Even though a large number of students have tattoos, only a small portion of the school is of legal age to get a tattoo without a parent signature, which is 18.
Wall said that the age issue doesn’t bother her when it comes to drawing tattoos for her friends.
A lot of students believe that teens should be able to do what they want, regardless of their age.
“I feel like people believe that [teenagers] are not ready, or that they’re not making the right decision because they’re young,” Rizkalla said. “But I feel like you could regret a tattoo at any age; I don’t think that just because you’re under 18 you don’t know what you want.”
Smith, however, believes that the law should change in a different direction.
“I think it should be 21 because I think a lot of 18-year-olds and even younger get these tattoos that they don’t really think about,” said Smith. “You don’t really know who you are when you’re 18.”
– By Caroline Schneider