Tattoos In Tender Places

There is an ancient and respectable (which in this context means “delightfully disrespectable”) tradition of sex workers getting tattoos on their tender bits. Back when small town entertainment meant some sort of traveling carnival, fair, or circus, there was always a “painted lady” attraction, either alone or as part of the peep show with the freaks and the dwarf and the giant; it was “adults only” because you were paying to see her tits (or more), but the excuse was that you paying to see her tattoos, which were impressive. There are folks songs about this! One of them starts “We came to town to see that old tattooed lady” and includes the line “but what we liked best was upon her chest….” Some times and places, female carnies were also hands-on sex workers (prostitutes, although that’s a word in disfavor these days). Prostitutes have a long tradition of tattooing themselves in dramatically sexual fashion. This is an illustration from Dr. Caesar Lombroso’s famous 1898 treatise on female criminals, The Female Offender:

Skin ink generally is growing in popularity, of course; but I’m not talking about the sort of tattoos that your cool aunt has on her midriff. Nope, I’m talking about expressly sexual skin art, ink that acknowledges its wearer as a sexual outlaw or at least as a sexual being — which, in our repressive culture, is not so very much different.

The first such tattoo I ever saw a picture of belonged to a lovely young porn star named Adrenalynn, who used to do a lot of work for one of the Reality Kings sites. She has a tattoo around her anus that says “Jarrod’s Little Fuckdoll” in honor of her husband Jarrod Richardson:

Ten years ago when Adrenalynn’s spiffy anus-tattoo was getting a lot of attention on sex blogs and forums (it was sort of before social media got so big) there was a lot of joking about what the tattoo actually said (a lot of photos aren’t very clear) and how her “brown ring” was the “one ring to rule them all” where “them” is porn-watching nerds (this joke only works if you know the Lord Of The Ring story, which is all about a magic ring of power with runes written on it). Apparently at least one woman took that joking seriously and decided she actually did want to rule all the anal-obsessed nerds. I can’t read Elvish runes, but I am not sure it matters:

Meanwhile in recent years you may have noticed that anal-sex porn has developed an odd quirk: increasingly producers have decided not to show the use of lubes, even though most of us “civilian” sexers don’t enjoy anal sex without lots of lube (or can’t even achieve penetration without it, like as not). And then there’s the strange intermediate compromise where the male (or, at least, the penetrating, if you don’t want overgender the discussion) talent will sort of spit copiously on the recipient-performer’s asshole in lieu of applying lube. That’s fine as far as it goes, which is not far enough for some of us, including a vocal contingent of “Spit is not lube!” partisans on my social media feeds, but apparently enough for this lady. It looks as if she got fed up with one too many “dry lunge” anal entry attempts and decided to make sure that the instructions for her use were clearly marked on her packaging:

And finally, there’s just the lady who decided to go with the ultimate mixed message. “Fun Center” in large bold letters seems very promising, but if the ring of barbed wire isn’t a warning to keep out, I don’t know what it’s supposed to suggest:

I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick tour of raunchy tattoos in places most people would never consider sticking a sharp needle!