Mother's bond is written on their skin

When Samantha Ruch of West Roxbury says her daughter is always by her side, she means it literally. Extending from the middle of Ruch's ribcage down to her right hip is the name Devin tattooed in block letters intertwined with flowers and vines.

"At the time, it was just me and my daughter," said Ruch, 28, who was divorced when she got the 10-inch-long tattoo two years ago. "Devin was my right-hand girl, and I wanted to represent that."

At one time, stretch marks were the most permanent reminders of childbirth on a woman's body, but now it might be footprints, teddy bears, baseball gloves, names, birthdates, or even the child's portrait inked in the place of the mother's choosing.

It's more and more common that women get tattoos that represent their children, according to Scott Matalon, 44, who estimates that his Allston shop, Stingray Body Art and More, does at least one mother tattoo out of approximately 50 tattoos each week. "Like having a child, there's something deeply personal about getting a tattoo," Matalon said. "For some people it's also therapeutic."

That was Tracey Litt's feeling after a disappointing birth experience with her daughter Zola, now 6. Litt, 44, a home inspector from Somerville, had planned for natural childbirth but was forced to have a Caesarean section. As a way to move past her feelings, Litt, already sporting seven tattoos, got another on Zola's second birthday. Now the C-section scar that crosses Litt's bikini line is flanked by two small Chinese symbols: mother on one side, daughter on the other. "It says this is the scar that connects us." Litt explained. "It was my way of making sense of the birth."

"People who like tattoos want to dedicate part of their body to show their love for their kids," said Chris Keaton, owner of the Baltimore Tattoo Museum in Maryland. He thinks the trend started in the 1980s when prominent athletes and actors started getting visible tattoos and people wanted to emulate them.

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The illustrated women

Tattooing has long been a man's world, but that's starting to change

"How are you doing there, Margi?" Sharon Bradbury, a tattoo artist at LightWave Tattoos in Saugus, asks Margi Priddy, who's lying on her side with her eyes closed and her skirt hiked up. The tattooing machine hums like a dentist's drill as Bradbury traces the outline of three roses and one rose bud that she's adding to a tattoo that covers the side of Priddy's left thigh.

Priddy, a 52-year-old Revere resident who works at a financial company, had in June begun the process of getting this, her second tattoo. It took a month for Bradbury to design the combination of a sword, dragon, phoenix, and flowers that Priddy wanted. Now, once a month, Bradbury works on Priddy's tattoo for up to three hours. The experience for Priddy is a bit different from four years ago, when a man did her first tattoo on her lower back.

"[He] was very chatty and nice," says Priddy. "But Sharon and I talk about girly things: her family, my family, the intricacies of family."

Bradbury is one of a growing number of women making their way into the predominantly male world of tattoos. Some of the interest is generated by the general mainstreaming of tattoos. They're no longer solely the realm of sailors and bikers. Reality shows such as "LA Ink" and "Miami Ink" feature female tattoo artists such as Kat Von D.

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Tattoo's last taboo

Getting inked is common, but above-the-neck art remains controversial


New Hampshire resident Dotty Jenkins doesn't mind the stares. Her hairless scalp is covered with an intricate, colorful web of tattooed images, including flowers, butterflies, and a striking pair of eyes, literally in the back of her head.

Jenkins started her tattoo collection because she has alopecia universalis, a condition that resulted in the loss of all the hair on her body several years ago. She recently won first prize in a tattoo contest sponsored by Salem's Peabody Essex Museum, in conjunction with "Body Politics," its exhibition on traditional Maori tattooing, or moko.

Just as Jenkins's tattoos are her way of reclaiming pride in her appearance, the Maori of New Zealand have been reclaiming their cultural heritage with their return to traditional face painting. Yet in America, where tattooing has become so commonplace that Angelina Jolie's latest ink grabs almost as much attention as her latest adoption, tattoos above the neck remain a topic of controversy, even among hardcore aficionados.

The parts of the body that are hardest to cover - the face and hands - are effectively "the final frontier" in tattooing, says Dave Kimelberg, a heavily tattooed corporate lawyer in Boston who has an ongoing photography project, INKED Inc., that documents fellow professionals and their hidden tattoos.

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