My wife Laetitia originally published this interview on former tattoo webzine Color My Skin in december 2016. As the site has ceased activity, I am happy to republish it on medium.
Jillian Lauren is a writer. She is the mother of 2 adopted boys and the wife of Weezer ‘s bassist player Scott Shriner. She also happens to be seriously tattooed and to have many stories to share about her tattoos.
In 2010 she published her first memoir, which you might have heard of — Some Girls. In this best-selling book translated in 17 languages — she looks back on her experience in a harem, as the 18 year old mistress of a rich man, the Prince of Brunei, and how it made her who she is now: a brave, vulnerable, funny, clever, and very badass woman. When I read her book I was not tattooed yet, and did not think I would ever get inked. Ever. But she wrote some beautiful and powerful pages about the process of getting her first tattoo by Guy Aitchison, which stayed with me.
So a few years later when my husband complained about feeling as if he was not seen for who he really was (an avid video game player working in a very corporate- minded place), Jillian’s words came back to me in a flash and I blurted out: “You should get a tattoo!”… the rest is history…Jillian’s description of the reasons she got tattooed in the first place, how it helped her make a statement about who she really was versus how she might mistakenly be perceived, remains the most accurate testimony of a transformative tattoo I have ever come across.
Jillian’s excellent second memoir published in 2015 Everything You Ever Wanted deals with the adoption of her first son, and the challenges as well as rewards that surrounded her becoming a mom. A very tattooed mom to a deeply sensitive and traumatized child dealing with people’s judgments and expectations.
She remains as brutally honest, self deprecating, and cleverly introspective as in her first memoir. Her writing feels like a welcoming and safe place to come home to. Reading her second memoir sealed the deal for me and I asked her if she would be willing to tell us more about her tattoos, and when she said yes I might have squealed like the fangirl that I am!
Laetitia: First of all, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions! I have looked high and low for photos of your tattoos and while I found some, it seems that they have never been properly featured anywhere really. Is it a conscious choice on your part, did no one think to ask? (everybody who has heard of your story MUST be curious!) or am I very bad at looking up images?
Jillian: I have some more pictures now, that show at least more of my arms.
But, no it’s not intentional. It’s just that in my present day life, in this last “incarnation of me”, for the last 15 years or so, I am a writer.
Most of my pictures are publicity pictures for that. It’s not that I am NOT showing my tattoos it’s just that they are not the point.
But I started to think that they were a little bit under represented and they are so much a part of my identity that they needed to be in my pictures!
Did anyone think to ask after Some Girls was published?
You know there was so much outrageous stuff in that book that I think people did not know where to begin! People asked me a little bit about the tattoos but they were way more interested in the harem. But since you’re coming at it from the tattoo perspective, I’m very happy to talk about it!
You are a storyteller and one could say that tattoos are a way of re-telling your story , they can become a way of owning it as well.
Yes. My tattoos were really important to me. They still are! But they were at a point where I felt I had gotten very off track in terms of who I am. I felt like the outside of me was not representing the inside of me. And then when I started getting tattooed, I felt much more honest in the world. And it is still true! I mean it’s one thing to walk around and be totally tattooed when you are 23 and … well…you think that life will always be how it is when you’re 23! And it is another thing when you are NOT 23, and you’re a mom and you’re dealing with your kids’ school, and you’re dealing with what people think of you, and you have to deal with social workers, and you have to get over people’s prejudices…
BUT I am still very grateful that I am unable to be a chameleon, pretend that I am somebody I am not. With tattoos, you are wearing your colors.
For those who have not read Some Girls YET(!) or who forgot about this particular moment in your memoir, could you please tell us how you came to have your first tattoo, who did it and what it meant to you at the time?
I had been the mistress of a very rich man, the Prince of Burnei and I came back from there and I decided that I had really gotten off track, like I said. I had forgotten about my dreams and I had become seduced by this lifestyle that really was NOT who I am inside. So I came back to the lower east side in New York in the mid nineties and there was a lot of energy in the tattoo community at that time, so I started to leaf through tattoo magazines and I was just fascinated by it. I was fascinated by the tribal aspects of it, the outsider world it represented. I always have felt legitimately like somebody who lives on the fringes and belongs there, ever since I was a little girl.
So I decided I was going to get a tattoo. And it was a very big, and really transformative tattoo. It goes from my belly all the way down to more “private” parts (laughs). The tattoo artist who did it is Guy Aitchison. At that time it was already very very hard to get an appointment with him. And I am really terrible at waiting. So I wrote him this letter and he responded to it right away and said “come to Chicago”!
He was the nicest guy! He looks softer now, but at that time he looked fierce, with long black hair, very scowly, he looked a bit scary and couldn’t have been a sweeter dude. So that’s how I got this first tattoo, and we became very good friends. I haven’t talked to him in a very long time but that’s only because my life has gotten so crazy, with motherhood and all that! And you know this tattoo did do what I wanted it to do.
I DID feel a sense of transformation when I got that first tattoo. And then I got many more, because it is addictive, you can’t stop once you start!
You talk of a “sense of transformation”, but now that tattoos have become more common and quite trendy, do you think they can still be considered as a rite of passage?
Absolutely! I mean I don’t think it is as radical a statement anymore. I am always super impressed when I see pictures of tattooed women in the fifties or the twenties. I love those old pictures and I think that those women truly were trailblazers, living in a really bold way.
Now I feel it more when I travel. In certain places you can feel how tattoos are still a little bit edgier than in the USA. Especially for women. For men, there is this idea that it is ok to be tattooed anywhere in the world! Except in Japan. When my husband goes to Japan (Jillian’s husband is the bass player for Weezer), he has to cover his tattoos, he has to put bandaids on his fingers to hide his tattoos.
But you are still changing your body when you get a tattoo. You are still marking a moment in time and you are still saying that the story you are living is important. You are saying that what this represents to you is important enough that you want to hold on to it forerever.
All this in a very public way.
It is something that you write about so well in Some Girls, the fact that with tattooing you have to stand back behind your decision because it is forever.
Yes, and I never regretted any of my tattoos BUT every once in a while… for example, there is this shirt that reveals a certain tattoo (shows a tattoo of a devil woman who is NOT wearing a bra)… and I love her! but maybe I would not choose to have a half naked devil woman tattooed any more at this point of my life. But I love her! My older son used to call her “Chichi”! He was 3 and asked what her name was, and I was like : “What do you think her name is?” and he said”Chichi”!
And so this shirt has a hole in the sleeve and I did not realize it when I bought it but the only thing you can see through that hole is her boobs!
I had to apologize when I wore it at preschool: “Sorry about the boobs staring at you!”
But yeah, you ‘ve got to stand by it, you’ve got to fully stand in your truth and go for it.
How soon after the first one did you get your other tattoos?
I don’t remember!
Let me think… the next one I got was this one (shows some hebrew lettering on her wrist), in hebrew on my wrist which is also a very unconventional thing to do because jewish people supposedly do not get tattooed.
I got that one — which means “blessed” — when my uncle died. I got it in New Mexico, where I went after he died. There was this place he really really loved in New Mexico where he had once taken a hike and picked up this rock that he kept all these years. So I took his rock and then went and just put it back. It was a very meaningful pilgrimage for me and so I got that tattoo to remember him and to remember that journey. This is a tattoo that I really love, although I also cover it when I travel.
And then the next one I got was I think the sleeve by Eddy Deutsche in San Francisco, who now lives around the corner from me in LA and our kids are friends! We just saw him last weekend. The other half sleeve I got was by Jill Jordan and this is a tattoo for my son.
It represents two coy fish with their tails intertwined. The tattoo was inspired by the story of Aphrodite and her son Eros fleeing from the giant Typhoeus. They turned themselves into fish and dove into the Euphrates to escape the monster, but they tied their tails together so they would never be separated. Later, Minerva told their story in the stars by creating the Pisces constellation.
This story about mother and her son moved me and I chose that tattoo for Tariku (Jillian’s first son she adopted from Ethiopia and who is now 9).
So now I’ve got to get a tattoo for Jovi (her second son whom she adopted domestically and who is 4), and I have this space left for him (shows her upper right arm, just above the koi fish tattoo). Right now my kids like to draw on me here so I figure I will just leave it empty while they still care!
And what is the story of Chichi?
There was a time when those kinds of girls were very popular, and I was into that kind of iconography, plus I was a burlesque dancer, so…
I know that your husband is very tattooed as well, is it something you share together, something you talk about?
Yes! I mean the reason I chose Jill Jordan is becasue she did a lot of his tattoos years before I met him. And the first time I met him, I was wearing this chinese dress and it had chinese caracters on it. It meant “snake”, but I did not know that at the time, I just thought it was a cute dress! And he had that symbol tattooed on his wrist. So that was a total coincidence if you believe in coincidences! or was it a sign? (laughs)
I have his astrological symbols tattooed, he’s a cancer, and he has mine tattooed on his hand. So it is definitely something we share because to me tattoos are a tribal thing. And we happen to be in the same tribe!
Having tattoos means being judged on one’s appearances, having kids means being judged on their behaviours (I am thinking of your dead-on post about people of “well behaved children). In both cases the way people react to us is based on prejudice (good or bad) that can be so unfair and so irritating. Would you say your tattoos have prepared you for the way people react when your kids are too loud/wild or have they made things more complicated?
That post is the most popular one I have written!
Yes they did. In two ways for me. I have different feelings about it.
Both my kids have special needs. Both of them are VERY visible, and we are a very visible family as a transracial family and they are really loud.
They both have had problems with tantruming in public and so it definitely prepared me for being looked at. Particularly because of the transracial thing. I am used to being unusual for people and I am used to being stared at, to being treated like an animal at the zoo sometimes! People think they can touch you, stare at you when you make yourself visible. And also when I was really struggling with my older son, and I did not quite understand what was going on, I felt so raw, so vulnerable…. And I wanted to protect him from people’s judgments and so I started to protect myself from people’s judgments too, which is so unlike me. But that was what I was going through at the time.
Then I was like “Gosh, it’s very hard having tattoos because I have this kid who is screaming, not because he is a bad kid but because he is a kid who suffered a lot of trauma and he has special needs and sensory issues. And there were times when I actually have to hold him, to restrain him physically in public and I felt like someone who had fallen from the back of a circus truck or a biker gang or something and I looked like I was kidnapping this poor child!
So in THAT sense it was a little harder to have tattoos and look more unsusual.
But mostly I would say that life — being on the outside of things — has prepared me for having kids who are on the outside of things.
How do your kids react to your tattoos?
They love them! Of course!
Kids LOVE tattoos! They don’t have any context. They do not have any of the social prejudices against it, they don’t have any associations. All they know is that their parents have all kinds of tattoos and that we have a great artistic creative kind of life. Most kids love my tattoos, that’s what I found. They especially love the naked lady tattoo!
Do you have any idea for a new tattoo ?
I do (seems to hesitate). I have a lot of ideas. But I don’t really want to talk about it before I do it, because then some of the “magic” gets diffused.
Do you still see yourself with a full bodysuit?
No I don’t see that anymore. It just seems like way too much of a time commitment but I do want to get more tattoos for sure.
With everything that is happening in the political sphere in the USA, how do you feel as an american?
I am so embarrassed anytime I talk to anyone who is not from here. I just feel so ashamed of our country rigt now…#notmypresident!
But it has mobilized me and I am trying to look at this election and at everything that is happening in this political climate, and not just here! I mean look at just what happened in the UK! This rise of nationalism and prejudice, and fear need to be answered with love. And I try to very consciously walk out the door every morning with THAT intention, and I try to take positive political actions, not just whine and bitch on facebook because I don’t think that that’s helping anyone. I am trying to remain positive and look at it as a wake up call and become more of an activist. But I also have tremendous amounts of anxiety.
That’s it ! Thanks a lot Jillian for answering our questions, and we wish you the best for upcoming projects, in particular the TV adaptation of Some Girls !
