I saw my niece recently. She’s eighteen, graduated from an arts high school, has a full-time job, and has moved into an apartment with her boyfriend and his friend. She also got two tattoos recently. A small one on her hand and a larger one on her arm. She asked me if I had heard about her getting tattoos, which I had from her father (my brother). I asked if I could see them. She showed me the small one, then shrugged off her jacket so she could display the other. It’s on her arm in a similar place to the one I have on my right arm. It was beautiful, and she told me she had to get it touched up because all the color hadn’t taken. I asked if she was going to get another one, and she said, “Oh, yes!” with eagerness. I laughed and said that you can’t stop with just one, and she nodded in agreement. Then, she said something about getting it because of me. I didn’t really register it, and we kept talking about tattoos as I walked her and her father to the door. She repeated that she had gotten her tattoos because she’s liked mine* ever since she was a small child. I was touched, but also concerned. It’s not a good reason to get a tattoo, but I can’t deny that it was flattering to hear.
She looked like me when she was a little girl. People used to think I was her mother, and my family would sometimes confuse her name with mine. We used to tell stories to each other for hours, with her being the Fairy Princess and me being the Fairy Queen. She wasn’t waiting around for her prince to come, however; in fact, many of our stories were about how she would save her prince from perils. I watched as she grew up to be a creative, artistic, sensitive, intelligent, thoughtful, striking young woman. She’s always been more feminine than I am. In fact, I remember when she was eleven, she wasn’t happy that her mom wouldn’t let her shave her legs until she was twelve. Boys like it when you shave your legs, she informed me gravely. When I told her that not all boys felt like that and that I didn’t shave my legs, she said with as much scorn as an eleven-year-old could muster, “You’re not married, so it doesn’t count.” It made me sad that she had gotten that message from society, but the only thing I could do was continue to model a different way of thinking in the best way I could.