It Happened To Me: I Got My First Tattoo At Age 60. Wanna See It?

I'm so grateful I never did tattoo a colorful Koi fish down my ribs at 21, because today it would be folding onto itself between the midriff rolls of menopause jelly.

Hello lovelies at this random posting time!

I want so badly to tell you about these special presents and prizes we are giving you to celebrate AJPT’s one year in existence, but I still haven't come up with what the grand prize should be, so give me another day on that, please. I want it to be really good and worthwhile.

It was not an intentional thematic thing to run this piece about getting a tattoo right after Charlie’s where he referenced his old job at Inked magazine. So the universe must just be curious about tattoos at the moment - and I am curious about all of yours.

I have zero. I first want to get one with/for my daughter, but I haven’t figured out the perfect symbol for it. I'm also scheduled to get 11:11 tattoos with some of you, which we settled on LAST 11/11, as well as a group matching tattoo with my daughter and Michael Stipe, her godfather.

That's a lot of tattoos that I have planned and promised and not yet gotten! I used to say that I would get my first tattoo (I pictured a big sailor-like anchor on my outer upper arm) when I turned 60, because I thought it was a funny countercultural statement to put a tattoo on my wrinkled skin at a time when people were expected to be bemoaning the tattoos that they had gotten on their nubile but now wrinkled skin. Take that, ageism!

But now that I'm past 60, it doesn't seem all that hilarious and my skin is not really wrinkly in the way that I thought it might be. (It is wrinkly and changed in other ways, for sure! Don’t get me wrong.)

So I was happy to get this story from Pia, where she grapples with some of the same stuff. Let’s all see where she lands with her decision below, and then we can talk about tattoos and aging in the comments, if you like, or about something much more pertinent to your life right now. I love you and whatever you have to say and I'll see you there!

Xox Jane

PS Oh wait, here is a celebrity-studded tattoo story I've only partially told you: Jennifer Aniston had a fun casual get together at her house (88% of the people there were household names, but she sweetly always treats me and the rest of the 12% like we are important). There was a tattoo artist there and all the guests were just getting these awesome tattoos that they were thinking of and drawing in the moment. Jennifer and another friend even got 11:11 tattoos. But I overthink things and therefore got nothing. There's a theme here with that anniversary gift for you that I'm ponderously deciding on….

And now I will see you in the comments! Enjoy Pia!

Me (right) about to turn 60, with my 24-year-old daughter, pre-tattoo in Italy.

By Pia Hinckle

A bearded face. Beady eyes. A goat full of ambition. What 8-year-old girl wants that kind of zodiac sign? Not me in 1973. I wished for a girly sign, like Virgo or Aquarius. I didn’t want to be an old goat, a Capricorn like my bossy and beloved grandmother Dee whose birthday was January 4th, just two days after mine. Back then she seemed ancient to me, but now I see she was only 59, the same age I was this past November when I got my first tattoo.

This decision to honor my 60th year involved choosing not just WHAT symbol deserved to be indelibly marked on my body, but more importantly, WHERE to put it. Finding the least saggy spot was a priority in my placement choice.

I’m woman enough to admit my vanity. On the one hand, I’m the strongest I’ve ever been in my life as an open water swimmer, on the other, the shocking loss of collagen and drooping skin in my post-menopausal years has teleported me beyond concern for eye wrinkles to a visual bad trip of a psychedelic epidermis that folds, bunches, and stretches ever downward approaching Senior Shar-Pei Island. As Dee (who never got a tattoo) used to say, “Sometimes I catch myself in the mirror and wonder, ‘Who is that old bag?’”

Now I found myself grateful that I never did tattoo that colorful koi fish down my ribs at 21 because today it would be folding onto itself between the midriff rolls of menopause jelly like one of those red Fortune Teller Miracle Fish in my warm palm.

For many months, I discussed openly with my twin 24-year-old tattooless daughters Fiona and Simone which parts of my body were less likely to turn my future tattoo into a melted candle as the years wore on.

I had some other placement prerequisites: I wanted my tattoo to be in a place where I could see it readily (not my backside or shoulders), but that was not easily seen by others (my forearms, neck or chest).

There just wasn’t a lot of derma real estate to choose from. I settled on two possibilities where the skin was still tight and there was so little of it that it was unlikely to sag no matter how old I lived to be:

1. My lower inside calf

2. The crook below my inside ankle bone

Now that I had a placement in mind, I returned to my Pinterest board of potential images, which was crowded with random tattoos of sperm whales, infinity circles, chambered nautilus shells, antique suns and moons, sand dollars, geologic maps, typewriters, the Tao of St. Francis, and fountain pens. I jotted down meaningful numbers, 415 (my area code) & 263 (my child home on Castro Street). Words came up blank. I was overwhelmed.

“Should it be color? Or just black?” I texted Simone, a painter who was then in Rome, interning at an arts non-profit.

Detail of Neptune’s Bath, Archaeological Park of Ostia Antica, Italy.

“What do you like?” she responded. I just didn’t know. Months ticked by and nothing felt quite right.

I wanted this tattoo, maybe the only one I will ever have, to embody all that I had survived in my five+ decades, plus symbolize my quest to achieve ease in writing and swimming. This next phase of my life is about practicing writing in a new, non-journalistic way and continuing to challenge my body and mind swimming in the ocean. I even named my substack Words & Water with this in mind. Should that name be my tattoo?

I now understood why people get multiple tattoos, imprinting the symbols, the people, the highs and lows, the loves and losses of this life. How could I commit to a single image, number or word? Was my relationship with the ocean the most important? Or writing? Or rocks? Or family? I yearned for a love-at-first-sight feeling that would tell me I had found “The One,” but it never arrived.