A mother’s two adoring children still look up to her even though she’s taunted and teased by people who call her a ‘freak’.
The woman doesn’t have any natural physical deformities. Instead, she’s covered head to toe in “prison style” tattoos, and despite her inability to find work, along with the verbal attacks that strike her every time she steps out of her home, she refuses to stop getting more ink, saying she’s an addict.
Melissa Sloan is a 46-year-old woman from Wales, who shows no regret over her toxic 26-year relationship with a tattoo gun. She has been getting inked since she was 20 years old. Sloan now accepts that she’s shunned by society, and though she understands the more she gets, the more difficult life becomes, she still refuses to stop.
“It’s like when you have a [cigarette] or a drink, you get addicted. I can’t stop it now, it’s addictive, for me anyway. I just can’t stop it,” said Sloan, adding that since tattoo parlors started denying her, because she’s “beyond help,” she got her own kit. She continued, “I carry the [tattoo] gun around with me in the boot, I’ll get one in the car or anywhere.”
Though Sloan can’t find a job–her body and face are now covered in somewhat sloppy ink–she continues to have her boyfriend give her three “tattoos prison style” each week. She has more than 800 tattoos.
Sloan explained that years ago, she worked as a toilet cleaner, but today, she’s turned away from similar roles.
“I can’t get a job. They won’t have me. I applied for a job cleaning toilets where I live and they won’t have me because of my tattoos…People have said I have never had a job in my life, I have had one once and it didn’t last long.” She continued, “But, if someone offered me a job tomorrow, I would go and work–I would take that offer.”
On top of her inability to find work, Sloan said she’s treated like an outcast and that every time she steps out of her door, she’s verbally attacked and mocked, people pointing and staring.
“Worse, the more I have the more they think I’m a freak. They jump out of the way and I think ‘what are you doing that for?’ It’s horrible,” she said. “I expected this in life, I can’t fit in with people as I like to be me and I’m always going to be myself.”
Also, Sloan claims she’s been barred from local bars and banned from school events which her two young children, aged eight and 10, might even be involved in. Even that doesn’t stop her.
“The kids say, ‘mum they’re looking at you’ and I say ‘take no notice of them,’” said the body art enthusiast, adding that her kids pick up on negative attitudes towards her. “They say my children will run away when they’re older, that’s heartbreaking.”
Influencing her children and encouraging them to use her as a role model, Sloan’s kids already have a fondness for body art.
“They got some on their arms last night, they’ve got school so they will have to take them off,” Sloan said, about allowing the children to have temporary tattoos, with promises for permanent art in the future. “I tell them they’ll have better ones when they are older.”
Before she got her tattoos, she was an average-looking woman. She shared images of her pre-tattoo face on her Instagram account. She looks barely recognizable now, if you knew her from back then!