Sara, a 36-year-old content creator from Virginia, has recently shared a video of her experience and regrets about getting heavily tattooed when she was younger.
With two sleeves and most of her upper body covered in ink, including patterns on her neck, Sara says that her tattoos no longer match her aesthetic and reflect who she is.
Stuck with a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling, she explained that it’s as if she’s wearing a shirt that she chose in her twenties for the rest of her life. Sara’s sincere confession has gone viral with over 1.8 million views and 8,000 comments, sparking a discussion on past mistakes and how to live with them.
Meet Sara, a 36-year-old content creator in pursuit of a peaceful life
As you can see, she is heavily tattooed, with most of her upper body covered in ink
Recently, however, Sara released a video, explaining that she no longer likes her body art
“Imagine, if you will, that you put a shirt on once when you were in your 20s and now you have to wear that for the rest of your life. And that is what it feels like to get heavily tattooed before you turn into a fully developed adult human. I wanted to talk about it, there’s a lot of reasons to regret my tattoos, but today specifically, I wanted to talk about not matching my aesthetic right. So I think if you ask almost anybody that’s over 30 If they have a better idea of who they are in their 30s than they did in their 20s they’re gonna be like, ‘Oh my God, yes.’”
She said her tattoos reflect moments from her past, but not her current life
“I have all of these tattoos that don’t necessarily reflect who I am at 36. They might have reflected a moment in time in my 20s, maybe a moment in time when I was like, not doing so well mentally. And they are here forever.
Before anybody says anything, no, I’m not getting all of my tattoos removed. Like, that’s not even feasible. Don’t even suggest it.”
And while her personal style keeps evolving, her tattoos do not
“Generally, I have like a lot more femme, girly aesthetic than I did when I was younger. I was a lot more dark and spooky and moody. And now, like, I have adult problems. Back to doing a bunch of stuff I liked to do when I was a kid, like collecting antiques and spending time outside and I wear a lot of white and ruffles.”
“My aesthetic just does not match, no shade to the artists, still get a ton of compliments on them, just wish that they weren’t on my body.”
“But I wanted to come on here and put myself out there and say I was told that I would regret my tattoos when I got older. I am older and I do regret my tattoos and you might too.”
We managed to get in touch with Sara, and she informed Bored Panda that she couldn’t specifically name who or what inspired her to get tattooed.
“I was really into having people draw on me from a young age, and it’s something that used to get me in a lot of trouble when I came home from school,” Sara explained. “As a younger teen, I began experimenting with customizing my appearance by changing my hair and clothing. On my 18th birthday, I got my first facial piercing and tattoo. Initially, I simply went for many body piercings, even going as far as taking Fakir Musafar’s body piercing intensive in San Francisco and having over 40 piercings at one point. It was from there that I embarked on my tattoo journey.”
The first designs she got “were small and not very well thought out,” but they were also not very noticeable.
“I knew a lot about piercings but not as much about tattoos back then, so for my first larger-scale tattoo, I trusted the artist to know best, and I ended up with a result I was not happy with,” she said. “I later covered that one up, and since then, I have been much more exacting.”
“I found great artists to whom I could convey my vision, including any elements I wanted to include, and they would interpret it in their style. At the time, I was truly invested in the process of coming up with art that I loved and putting it on my body, pushing myself to endure as long as the artist and I could go. I always said I would never regret my tattoos. However, with some time and therapy, I realized that the true motivation behind my intense interest in body modifications was not necessarily positive.”
Sara’s video has now gone viral
According to a 2017 Statista survey, four out of ten U.S. adults between the age of 18 to 69 have at least one tattoo with a quarter of respondents saying they are the owner of multiple designs. In fact, when counting the 19 percent that said they were considering getting one, only 39 percent of Americans reported being on the non-inked side of the fence.
At the top of the list of reasons for getting one was ‘to express my style and opinion’ (38 percent). In second place was the similarly themed ‘to express my personal opinion’ (37 percent). Making up the top three, the family makes its way into the picture, with 34 percent saying their tattoo pays tribute to their children.
Of those that are still considering it, the most common reason was the fear of the pain involved, followed by exactly what happened to Sara, the possibility of falling out of love with the tattoo after a while.ADVERTISEMENT
Given the rise of tattoos, the number of regrets has increased as well (though the vast majority of people never look back after getting one).
In 2015, Harris Poll talked to 2,225 U.S. adults and found out that nearly one-fourth (23%) of those who are inked say they regret this decision at some point in their lives.
Top-ranked regrets (collected in an open-ended manner) included:
- They were too young when they got the tattoo;
- Their personality changed or the tattoo doesn’t fit their present lifestyle;
- They got someone’s name that they’re no longer with;
- The tattoo was poorly done or doesn’t look professional;
- The tattoo isn’t meaningful.
Advanced Dermatology found that most regrettable tattoos are actually quite small, with 63% of them being no bigger than the palm of a hand. (At least when a tattoo is petite, it can easily be covered.)
Interestingly, just as Sara suggests, waiting a few years to get your ink usually helps decrease your chances of regretting it. A whopping 46% of the tattoos people no longer liked had been on their bodies since they were under 20, and 45% were done in their 20s.
Max Brown of Brown Brothers Tattoos in Chicago, Illinois, has been tattooing in and around the city for over 15 years. He says the first thing to consider if you want to avoid making a tattoo mistake is the location.
“Certain areas just don’t heal as well as others,” he explained.
For example, finger tattoos, especially on the side of the fingers, are especially problematic. Brown says this is because the side and underside skin of hands and feet don’t necessarily respond well due to their function in day-to-day activities and performance.
Next, you really want to think about the style. “Tattoos without black ink tend to fade unevenly, and without the black lines to anchor, can become soft and fuzzy and difficult to read once healed and aged, especially in high-exposure areas of the body, such as the arms, hands, and necks,” he added.
And finally, Brown says you need to stay away from what he calls the “tattooer’s curse,” which calls the hesitation he and other artists feel when asked to tattoo a lover’s name for fear of cursing the relationship.
However, most decisions in life carry some degree of regret. And at the end of the day, if there’s no way to fix the situation, you just have to learn to live with it.
Sara started talking about tattoo regret on her YouTube channel in 2020, at least a year before using TikTok
“Here is the moment I first mentioned tattoo regrets and some of the other things I regret about them,” the content creator added.
“I have been using my social media for years to talk about things I have experienced, and even though I only had a few hundred TikTok followers when I made the video on March 6th, I was simply sharing my story as I have always done (hence [my nickname], saraovershares).”
Now that she’s had time to reflect, Sara’s advice to young people considering getting inked would be:
- “Start small, and don’t jump into getting giant pieces because you might wish you had that ‘real estate’ for designs later on down the road.”
- “Think for at least a year about any design you are considering if it is bigger than your palm or not easily hidden.”
- “Choose good artists whose work aligns with what you want, and be prepared to pay – this will likely force you to wait because good artists stay booked out for months or longer.”
- “Only book an artist if you can see what their healed work looks like, and be wary of anyone who only posts freshly done tattoos.”
- “Last but not least, the point of my video: even if you love your tattoos and it is a huge part of your life, your life over the course of the next ten or twenty years can change or deviate from what you had planned. People judge less for tattoos now than they did ten years ago, but there is still somewhat of a stigma around them. If you are going to get heavily tattooed, you need to be aware that you could find yourself in a position where you regret some or all of them for any number of reasons. Never say never!”
Sara mentioned that she doesn’t hate her tattoos now, but she is honest with herself and acknowledges that they simply do not reflect who she has become. “If I could wave a magic wand and make them disappear, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
