Permanently Beautiful

Your mother may have been horrified when you got your first tattoo, but it wouldn’t be surprising if she had a tattoo of her own now. Tattoos have been gaining in popularity since the 1970s. Getting “inked” isn’t the social taboo it was when your parents were young and tattoos were associated with felons, bikers and the seamier side of life. Today, tattoos are mainstream, as likely to be seen in the corporate board room as at a university coffee shop.

Whether you have a small, discretely-placed butterfly or a sexy, eye-catching low rider, wearing a tat makes you feel sexy, sensuous, independent, free-spirited and maybe just a little bit dangerous. Tattoos are all about the attitude, how they make us feel about ourselves. Interestingly, this isn’t the only time in modern history that tattoos have gained wide acceptance. Tattoos were popular among wealthy high society women (and men) during the 1930s. The rich and famous used to host elegant soirees so they could show off their newest tats to their envious friends.

Permanent makeup is the ultimate beauty tattoo. Using safe, sterile paramedical tattooing techniques, the highly experienced technician like Melany Whitney can give you perfectly shaped eyebrows; line your eyes with no flake, no run eyeliner; permanently add your signature color to lips and more. Artistic permanent makeup tattooing can correct facial flaws and enhance your natural beauty. And because it’s a tattoo, you look amazing 24/7. For your next tattoo, consider permanent makeup.

Beautiful newly done eyebrows.

So you’ve got a tattoo of a rose on your ankle, maybe you have one on your shoulder too, so what’s holding you back from getting the perfect eyebrows done with permanent cosmetics? Yes, permanent cosmetics are tattoos too, but as they are on your most visible part of  your body your face, so you want them done “Just Right”.

Not every tattoo artist, or for that matter not every permanent cosmetic technician, is capable of providing the lasting, classic beauty look that you want on YOUR face. When it is your face and your eyebrows, you want natural! Keep them guessing, but you want the correct shape, the arch that draws out your eyes, and you want beauty!

This is where training, experience, and artistic flair is absolutely crucial to who you choose to do your eyebrows. The tattoo artist who drew a lifelike flower may not understand facial morphology nor have been a cosmetic artist trained to enhance and beautify faces. Melany Whitney is all of these things and more. She is  the consummate artist, a professional makeup artist, superiorly trained, and on top of that nationally recognized.

Don’t just think anyone can or should do your eyebrows when you are ready to experience the freedom from makeup now that you are over your fear of tattoos. Think only of Melany Whitney, the expert when it comes to permanent makeup for YOUR face.

In the 1950s and 1960s, tattoos signified rebellion against middle-class conformity, according to historian Jonathan Zimmerman. They were associated them with street gangs, motorcycle clubs, ex-cons and drunks. In 1959, the National Education Association advised schools that “potential juvenile delinquents” could be identified as “those with male kin who are tattooed.”

And it was mostly males who got inked, not females. In a culture of straight-laced Organization Men, tattoos came to embody a kind of rough-hewn, frontier-style masculinity. That’s why Philip Morris USA Inc. decided to adorn its Marlboro Man – the epitome of 1950s machismo – with a small piece of body art on his hand. “We wished to show a man who, during some moment – some loose moment – got himself tattooed,” an advertising executive explained.

Fast-forward to earlier this year, when toymaker Mattel Inc. released its Totally Stylin’ Tattoos Barbie doll. It comes with a set of tattoo stickers that can be placed anywhere on her body, plus a tattoo gun that allows children to ink the doll – or themselves.

That tells you all you need to know about the changed cultural meaning of the American tattoo. It has become just as common among women as among men. Most of all, it has gone 100 percent mainstream. If even Barbie is getting inked, and it’s totally stylin’, we can be sure that there’s nothing remotely rebellious about it.

That could be the best news of all, if you’re still debating about yourself and tattoos. If you get inked, you won’t be defying social propriety. As tattoos become more accepted, indeed, it will be unusual to find someone who doesn’t have one.

That’s why the heavily tattooed ex-rocker and reality-show star Ozzy Osbourne warned his own daughter against body ink. “To be unique, don’t get a tattoo,” Osbourne urged. “Because everybody else has got tattoos.” Of course, his daughter got one anyway.

A subtle and gorgeous way to get inked is with permanent make-up. You can flaunt it or keep it hushed as your beauty secret.