Meet Megan Massacre – tattooartist on NY Ink and life-saver tosome unfortunate tattoo victimson America’s Worst Tattoos. We

spoke to the fiesty tattooed lass to get her tospill the beans about being a female tattooartist, and perhaps an encounter with theSWAT team while getting a tattoo-virgininked!How did you get into tattooing?It was actually kind of spontaneous. I hadthought about tattooing when I was about14 years old, and I went to a tattoo studioand said “I want to learn how to tattoo, sowhat do I do”. They said that I have to paythem $4000, and at that age, $4000 was likea million bucks, and I thought “Forget it!My dreams are crushed, and that will neverhappen”. So I pretty much forgot about itbut I was still working with art. I was 18, incollege and I still didn’t know what I wantedto do with my life and I had a random jobselling furniture just to get myself to col-lege. One day, a co-worker of mine said shewanted me to give her a ride to a tattoo shopafter work because she wanted to get a jobas a piercer there. So, I gave her a ride andI was hanging out at the tattoo shop whileshe was doing her thing. I guess she told theowner of the shop that I could draw reallywell. So, after they were done doing theirthing, they came out and one of them asked“Your friend says you can draw really well.Would you be willing to draw me a picture”.He was impressed and asked me to drawmore things, so I ended up spending the daysketching, and then he asked if I’ve ever tat-tooed before. I said I’ve never done it butalways wanted to when I was younger, andthen he offered to let me do one immedi-ately. He was so impressed with the out-come and asked if I wanted to learn totattoo. I said yes, and the very next day, Iquit my job and I’ve been tattooing eversince

.What was the weirdest or craziest tattooexperience you’ve had as a tattoo artist?Once I was tattooing at 3am in thevery first shop I worked at. Iwas tattooing this 18 yearold kid, it was his first tat-too and all of a suddenwe hear a loud crash atthe door, a SWAT teamcame in the shop andheld their guns up ateverybody in thestore, including thecustomer, who peedhis pants he was thatscared. We had noidea what was goingon!It turns out that thatnight, there was a bigrobbery down thestreet and we didn’teven know. It alsoturned out that robberhad parked his van inour parking lot, so theyassumed that he waswith us and accused usfor harboring him.After they realized thatwe had nothing to dowith the robber, theymade us stay in to doa stake-out, staying inthe shop for the next10 hours.

What are the challenges of beinga woman in the tattooing indus-try?Tattooing has come so far withtime and it’s becoming moremainstream and accepted. Butwhen I started like 9 to 10 yearsago, it was very uncommon for awoman to tattoo, so when I said Iwanted to tattoo, everyone thoughtI was weird. After I got my tat-toos, and I would get publicly ha-rassed by people, especially olderwomen.But over the years, that stoppedhappening, and when I was at anairport about 5 years ago, awoman came up to me and said“Come here, let me look at you”,and I was thinking “Oh god, herewe go again” and she just said“Your tattoos are beautiful”, andthat was the first time I’ve everhad an older person they actuallyliked my tattoos That was when Irealized that the world was chang-ing, and a lot of it had to do withtattoo television shows. Miami Inkwas the first tattoo TV show to air,and it became very popular. Therewas a female tattoo artist on theshow too who is now really popu-lar. People are beginning to lookat women in the tattoo industrynot as attractive anymore, but assex symbols.I would say now that women inthe tattoo industry have it easierthan men did, since we’re consid-ered attractive

What did you look forward towhen it came to filming Amer-ica’s Worst Tattoos?My favorite part about it was justhow fun it was. Doing cover-upsis not a fun thing for tattoo artists.It’s a very stressful and difficultthing, but the people we got on theshow are such good sports aboutit. They knew their tattoos wereterrible and they really wantedsomebody to help them. And real-izing how sad they were abouttheir tattoos and actually going inthere to fix them and seeing howhappy and excited they were. Ionce helped out this girl who wasso embarrassed to wear her bikiniout in public because of how hor-rible her tattoo was, and after Imade it beautiful, not only is shenot embarrassed but she is alsoconfident. And that can actuallychange a person’s life.

MEGANPeople are beginning to look at

women in the tattoo industry

as sex symbols.

Catch Megan on America’sWorst Tattoos premiering

Sunday, 18 March @11:00PM.

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