The Rose

"I just think they're tacky". If you know someone, or you are someone with a tattoo, you'll invariably know this common retort to body art. It is usually from someone who is either a bit on the conservative side or is perhaps fearfully longing to express their identity in such a way. We've heard it all before. "But what about when you're old, have you considered how your skin will look?!". Notwithstanding the laser removal treatments now available, those years are going to pass anyway, so why not take the opportunity to uniquely express your identity on your skin?

What a lot of those people who turn up their nose to body art often fail to understand is that our tattoos often honour a person or a memory. They symbolise something that has greater meaning than the individual on which it is inked. Unless you're like my childhood best friend, Scott, who made his own tattoo gun out of an old sewing machine and, using old pen ink, tried to give himself a design of the southern cross in a dank hay shed on a drunken dare one Friday night. But that is a story for another time.

I like to think my tattoo has a special meaning. As you can see from the photo, it is only small, and it is a rose. You may ask why go for something so simple, so small? Why not get something more detailed? Were you too chicken to endure the pain of filling it in with colour or getting something larger? Well, I'd be lying if I said the pain wasn't a deterrent. But the answer is that it is the symbol for Cystic Fibrosis Victoria. Putting two and two together you'd correctly deduce that I do suffer from cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that affects the respiratory and digestive systems, but it goes deeper than that. It has a bit of a story.

In 2007 Cystic Fibrosis Victoria launched a calendar competition where people were invited to submit designs of their own, and if yours was chosen, it would be included in next year's calendar. I was 14 at the time and my older sister Mathilda was 16. She has always looked out for me, taking extra measures as the older sibling to protect her weak*, frail*, ailing* younger brother. She thought this would be a cool thing to be a part of and for her to show off her impressive drawing prowess. My sister entered her design, and months passed before we heard anything. After a while she received a letter, "Congratulations, Mathilda! We are including your design for your birth month of July!". Sure enough, later that year when the calendars were released, we flicked through to July and found her design. Now, one could argue this in itself would hav enough significance to warrant getting a tattoo, but it gets better.

Apparently, over the course of the following year, Cystic Fibrosis Victoria kept receiving letters and emails commending the pictures used in the calendar, specifically the month of July. CF Victoria were also quietly looking to update their company logo. You can see where I'm going with this. After a few months, my sister received another letter: "Mathilda, we have received such positive feedback from your submission for our calendar, we have all voted that it would be the best design to use to represent our charity. Would you allow us to use your design?". She was ecstatic! She didn't bother to read the fine print that explained they were a charity and therefore would not be able to remunerate her for her design, she was too caught up in the idea of being THE person to design a company logo.

And so it goes, the charity that provides aid and research for the very disease that I am burdened with, also had its logo designed by my sister Mathilda. It was an obvious choice to get inked.