https://cover.inkedmag.com/2020/ruby-white/…Tattooed Bitches #realtalk number 2. The past few days I’ve seen lots of hatred and judgments from my fellow artists going toward the Inked Magazine Cover Girl competition and the contestants. I am shocked to see so much condescending comments on the girls, calling us bitches and attention whores. These women are mostly your customers, some of them your co-workers. For a moment I felt abashed to be part of a community that still body-shame and put women down for expressing self-confidence, for wanting to be acknowledged, for seeking validation or for owning our sexuality and sensuality. So many of us got into tattooing because we endured other hardships like mental and physical illnesses, bullying, abuse and so on. Getting tattooed was sometimes the only thing we got to empower ourselves and to allow us to reclaim our bodies and image. We should be uplifting these women and cheering for them. I have been bullied for most of my childhood for “being different”: I refuse to be bullied for putting forward this difference today. I can’t help but sensing a bit of good old everyday sexism through the cracks, as we ought to behave how we’re expected to, be pretty but not slutty, show enough but not too much, be quiet and not be heard.