My daughter, the privately educated tattoo artist
It wasn’t the career path Diana Appleyard had in mind, when spending a fortune on top schools
Former “wild child” Zara Tindall made headlines when she had her tongue pierced in her teens – and she made them again last week by admitting she’d be “horrified” if her daughters Mia, five, and Lena, 14 months, came home with a tattoo when teenagers.
I’m afraid the chances are high: one in three young British adults now has a tattoo and experts only expect this figure to rise.
As a mother, I’ve got a great deal of sympathy for Zara’s feelings – they certainly echoed mine, when my youngest daughter, Charlotte, had her first “inking”. So imagine my horror when she went one step further and announced that she was going to become a tattoo artist.
We had, let’s be frank, poured a fortune into this child’s education: first prep school, then a very expensive boarding school in Scotland, otherwise known as the “Eton of the North”. It was money that we, as hard-working journalists, could barely afford.
I’m sure many parents, after congratulating themselves on their offspring’s exam results this past fortnight, are idly wondering what step they’ll take next. Medicine, perhaps. Or law, followed by the bar. I always knew Charlie would be an artist – from an early age she showed an astonishing ability – but without wishing to come over too Margo Leadbetter, human flesh was not the medium I had in mind.
While her friends were starting internships, she took on a tattoo apprenticeship, which prompted stunned pauses, as people politely attempted to find something positive or encouraging to say.
Others were blunt: “Oh no, how awful! How are you and Ross coping?” with the unspoken, “all that money spent on her education…” tailing away into the ether.
To my generation, not to mention my parents’ (a decidedly ink-free accountant and Latin teacher), tattoos were the mark of navvies, sailors, brickies, something that
“people like us” simply did not have. If I’d brought home a boyfriend with tattoos, they’d have been horrified. If I’d had one myself, they would have had a heart attack.
Charlie’s first, at least, was barely visible, but the big spider climbing up the back of her neck proved a highwater mark in the test of my straining tolerance.
I tried to be supportive, even though she knew I hated it, but my husband Ross was far more direct. “Roll up, roll up!” he’d shout. “Queue ’ere to see the amazin’ painted lady!” Today, aged 26, she has 30 tattoos and counting.
Charlie has always been “different”, with a highly individual style. At boarding school she dyed her lovely blonde hair jet-black, and before the tattoos came the piercings, all the way up her ears, in her lip, through her nose; getting her through the scanner at the airport was quite a feat.
While she was physically transforming herself into a person I did not entirely recognise, it alarmed me that she would prejudice people against her, before they could discover the charming young woman
She’s earning a very good living – far more than many of her private school peers
underneath. A survey last year by DPG, the HR group, suggested that 64 per cent of employers would still admit to discriminating against tattooed job candidates.
I suppose Charlie neatly sidestepped that problem by joining the industry, and while I had visions of her beavering away in some dingy backstreet dive, it turns out that 21st-century tattoo studios are now stylish, brightly lit and welcoming. Artists are held in high esteem and, at the top of their game, are flown all over the world for commissions, earning hundreds of thousands of pounds as they go.
If Charlie is not quite at that level yet, she is still a very successful tattoo artist, working flat out, causing a storm with her designs on Instagram and earning a very good living – far more, in fact, than many of her private school peers.
She and her boyfriend (who is also a tattoo artist) support themselves in a lovely flat by the Thames in London, and while many her age are still studying, or heavily dependent on their parents to support them financially, they soon hope to get on to the property ladder.
What more could a proud mum like me want? One thing, as it turns out: last Christmas I gave her the ultimate accolade, and asked her to tattoo a (tiny) owl on my ankle, in memory of my mother, who loved the birds – and would, I concede, have been very proud of Charlie, too.