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“Women are born with pain built in. It’s our physical destiny — period pains, sore boobs, childbirth. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives.” Fleabag got it right. Pain is stitched into the fabric of womanhood — physiological, emotional, and cultural. It arrives early, and rarely lets go. Across a woman’s lifetime, pain is structured as something to be endured. This endurance is so normalised that it becomes a kind of conditioning — an expectation that suffering is simply part of being a woman. Rarely is it chosen. Rarely is it ours.
Tattooing disrupts this. It offers pain not as punishment, but as choice. In doing so, it creates an unlikely space for agency. To sit still under the machine, to ask for a wound that becomes art. “I chose to get my first few tattoos during transformative moments in my life in a way to control the pain I chose to feel,” says Monica Rastogi, a Philadelphia-based artist. “I was left with something beautiful on my body to adore by the end of it while also ‘feeling something’ that was painful by choice.”
For women, this act isn’t about rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It’s about reclaiming the one thing we’re always being told is not quite ours: the body. That stretch of skin we grow into and out of, that everyone feels entitled to. That body that’s meant to be pleasing, but not too loud; sexual, but not marked. Tattooing refuses neatness. It is messy, permanent, and subversive. And for a new generation of homegrown female tattoo artists, it’s equal parts profession and resistance.
The Politics Of The Pain We Choose
There’s a distinction between pain that is imposed and pain that is chosen. In most contexts, women’s experiences of pain are involuntary: the medicalisation of childbirth, the trauma of sexual violence, or even the micro-aggressions of daily labour. These pains are external impositions. Tattooing, by contrast, is a rare moment in which pain is self-directed. “This pain is a choice and it is embracing you — that’s empowering,” observes Prachi Modak, a Mumbai-based artist. “By choosing this pain, we are choosing to grow with it.”
It marks a shift from being acted upon to acting. “There’s something really powerful about choosing pain especially when so much of our pain as women is either dismissed or expected to be hidden,” says Mumbai-based Natasha Ravindran. “With tattoos, pain becomes a medium for something meaningful. It’s on your terms. It’s for you.”
For female tattoo artists, this is a daily reality. They see women enter their studios cautious but curious, unlearning shame and learning ownership. “Choosing to experience pain on my own terms felt incredibly empowering as a woman,” says Mimi, a Birmingham-based artist. “It helped me shift my relationship with my body, allowing me to celebrate and decorate parts I once felt insecure about.” The act of sitting through the pain becomes an assertion — a refusal to shrink.
The Female Body As A Site Of Negotiation
Walk into any tattoo studio, and you’ll find more than just ink and latex gloves. You’ll find stories. Some tattoos celebrate queer identity. Others commemorate survival. Most are private. But all of them matter.
“Tattooing helps clients deal with [grief]… when they walk out with that tattoo, they look at the entire situation differently,” said Prachi. “I also feel they’ve healed a certain part of them they did not know.” For some, it’s about rewriting what the body represents. “My grandma was widowed,” Triparna shared, “and in order to protect herself from unwanted male attention, she got tattoos. If you are marked, it makes you ugly, less desirable, and men don’t come after you.”
Tattooing reclaims the body as a surface not for consumption but for authorship. “Self-expression is so important but yet a suppressing topic when it comes to taking ownership of your body,” said Monica. “For a majority of our upbringing in our culture there’s always been a stigma of not having full authority over your autonomy.”
The Rearticulation Of Desirability
Mainstream beauty culture upholds a vision of femininity that is polished, passive, and above all, legible. Tattoos complicate this formula. They introduce visual noise. They refuse standardisation. “For me, being visibly tattooed and visibly different means people often don’t know where to place me. I’ve stopped trying to fit into what femininity should look like,” says Letitia Mendes, a non-binary artist from Mumbai. “They challenge the idea that beauty has to be ‘delicate,’ ‘clean,’ or ‘untouched’,” echoes Natasha. “It’s like carving out space for myself on my skin, in the world that isn’t shaped by anyone else’s gaze.”
For many artists, the process of marking others is also a process of reshaping themselves. “Tattoos have definitely helped,” Triparna says. “It helped me discover my femininity, more than anything else.” What emerges is a kind of self-definition that doesn’t seek permission. “Tattooing has made space for a version of femininity that’s layered and ever-changing,” says Mehak Basu. “It’s sometimes bold, sometimes tender, but always mine.”
Labour, Gender, & The Tattoo Industry
While tattooing may offer liberation for clients, the industry itself has not extended that same autonomy to its women. Female artists entering the profession were often met with scepticism or objectification. “We as women are now coming into the industry — and I’m sure not at the same pace or ease — but we are here to create a space for us that we deserve to be in,” says Monica.
For many, this has meant not just surviving the industry, but reshaping it. “I have the power to heal somebody through my art,” Prachi says. And part of that power lies in creating environments that resist macho posturing in favour of care. “Being a woman also allows me to offer something different,” adds Upasana. “A more empathetic, comfortable space, especially for women and queer clients who may not feel safe in hypermasculine environments.”
The Ethics Of Touch
Tattooing is, by nature, an intensely intimate practice. It involves sustained physical proximity, and a mutual suspension of boundaries. “Tattooing is one of the most intimate acts I’ve ever known — skin to skin, breath to breath, story to story,” says Mehak. “You don’t just mark someone physically; you hold space for them emotionally.” That intimacy, when handled with care, becomes transformative.
“It’s not just about placing art on someone’s body,” says Upasana Valia. “It’s about holding space for them while they go through that transformation. It’s honouring their trust in me.” Letitia frames it simply: “Tattooing is so personal. You’re literally holding someone’s skin while they open up emotionally, too. That trust, it’s not small.”
Some clients are seeking more than art — they’re seeking repair. “Sometimes clients have had really painful experiences,” Tahsena Alam, a London-based artist, says, “and such pain and trauma might have left them with scar tissue. When they look at the area they want to see something beautiful instead of looking at scars.” In those moments, the artist is a witness to reclamation. “They do not fear pain,” says Upasana. “They’re just channeling it through the tattoos, wearing them as beautiful battlescars.”
Marking The Body To Rewrite The Self
When bodies are policed, pain is punished, and beauty is commodified, tattoos offer a rare inversion. It isn’t a cure for anything. It won’t fix patriarchy. It won’t undo the years we’ve spent contorting ourselves into other people’s ideas of beauty. But it’s a start. “Tattooing is just for you,” says Tahsena. “It’s for you, and how you want to look. It’s you wanting to carry artwork on your body for the rest of your life.”
For some, it becomes a kind of personal mythmaking. “It becomes a mirror for who you are, or who you’re becoming,” said Natasha, “and sometimes, it’s a way to manifest who you want to become.”
