Tattoo Much Too Young

I apologise for stealing this headline from the Scottish Sun. I don’t apologise for doing it better.

A little further afield in Scotland today, the Scottish Sun published their small investigation on the growing number of “tattoo parties”. The article claims that more and more “tattooists” are traveling the country and tattooing children as young as 12 in their homes, sometimes even tattooing their faces.

I’ve been a little shocked by this one, to be honest. We’ve known for a long time that there are idiots who will do this, but to tattoo a 12 year old’s face really takes it to another level. The article also unveils the soaring amount of Scots who have contracted Hepatitis C, suggesting the two are linked. This is pretty scary stuff right here. From the Scottish Sun:

Greedy Barry Tunstead, 28, is one of the growing number coining it in from illegal tattoo parties he advertises on the internet.

The dad-of-one, who works from a top-floor flat in the city’s Govan area, says on his advert: “I am available for tattoo parties any size. I’m based in Glasgow but travel all over the country.”

When contacted by undercover reporters, Tunstead – who also uses the name Ryan Hope in emails – directed our reporter to a Bebo page called Tattoo Gathering.

And he bragged he had “no problem” breaking the law by tattooing a 17-year-old girl.

He said: “I would need consent from your friend’s parents due to the age but I’ve no problem doing the tattoo.

“My prices are very reasonable. There’s no set fee, it’s pay as you’re tattooed. I worked in a top studio in Glasgow for a year but the chair rental kept going up so decided to freelance.”

The article also has snippets from interviews with real tattoo artists, health officials and worried parents, this is really just a small example of what’s in there. The article is actually pretty good for a mainstream publication- there’s no “it’s not for sailors” or “tattoo are horrid” stuff in there, so it’s pretty valuable for what it is.

As far as tattoo parties go, we’ve already covered this one, but for the sake of sounding like your mother, I’ll repeat it with the link here. We have a lot of readers first finding this website through Google, looking for answers, so if this helps anyone out, that’s cool. Any questions are also welcome, through the usual contact addresses- I don’t know all the answers, but I usually have someone on hand who does. Keep yourselves, and your kids, safe.