Individuality and Pinning It

or, I Am Such a Fucking Unique and Special Snowflake

One of the reasons I even remembered that I have a tattoo is because my friend Kat pointed out that my tattoo has a life of its own, largely on Pinterest. Kat's blog, Unbecoming, is fantastic and crafty and bookish and adorable and I highly recommend popping over if you have a chance, but she has a Pinterest account and my tattoo showed up on her feed one day. I don't have Pinterest, I think it is essentially the Internet equivalent of folding a fitted sheet, but that's neither here nor there. Kat asked, "Is it weird that I can recognize the back of you?" And I thought, "not really, I mean, my tattoo is unique..."


Blogger, for those who don't know, is a Google product and you can use Google Stats to see where your blog traffic is coming from. Thanks to people apparently loving my tattoo, 81% of the traffic to this corner of my brain comes from Pinterest in image searches. (And it's uncomfortably disheartening that my photo drives more traffic than my words, but then again, I never professed to be a wordsmith.) So I started to explore back, clicking through Pinterest boards where my photo has appaeared... and what I've found is odd. It's sometimes flattering, sometimes unnerving, but entirely unexpected.

I suppose that when we expose ourselves, in whatever capacity, to the Internet, we make an implied agreement that what we have written, shared, photographed, created, ranted about, or loved no longer belongs entirely to us. By making so much of our personal lives public, we create connections, develop new ideas, and span the globe in a remarkable and wonderful exchange of personalities, and the leviathan that is the Web grows and heaves and hopefully furthers human progress in some way.

It was surprising more than anything else to see my tattoo having a life of its own independent of me. When I started to get annoyed was when I saw comments on many various Pinterest boards that were to the effect of "I'm getting this tattoo!!" My sense of individuality, such that it is, was deeply, fiercely offended. Like a dog protecting a bone, my hackles were raised and my soul growled, "MINE." I labored over that tattoo. It was a gift to myself, cheesy as that may be, after my a tough and protracted experience that still shakes me. I selected the font, the placement, the size -- every aspect of it was something I considered mine.

Now, of course the quote is not mine. "Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été," is not something I originated. Albert Camus did, and I love the quote and the idea, "In the middle of winter, I found in me an invincible summer." The quote means something very significant and poignant to me, specific to my experience, but sweeping enough to shed light on pieces of the human experience at large. (And besides, you'd have to be a very special kind of asshat to tattoo something YOU said on your own body.)

All the same, I feel a great amount of ownership over my tattoo, because when you consider it, it's a permanent part of MY BODY. If we truly own nothing else in this world, it is our persons we possess, or should possess, most fully. Knowing that someone, or multiple someones, out there have imitated my uniqueness evokes a strangely powerful feeling of having been robbed. (And I have actually been robbed, more than once, and it fucking suuuuucks.)

With that, however, I know that by sharing my body art on the Internet, I have relinquished my claim to it as only my own. And sad as it may make me, knowing that I am not now, nor ever have been, the unique and special snowflake we all fancy ourselves to be, there is also a bizarre sense of primacy and legitimacy in knowing I was the first, but not the last.

And I am so, so flattered. I am flattered that complete strangers appreciate a very personal and specific part of who I believe myself to be. I am flattered that this tattoo of mine could inspire and even help some people, for I get the impression that had it not been in tattooed form, some would never have encountered the quote. So re-pin, like, share my tattoo. Have it inked upon yourself, should you desire, and I hope it gives you strength or comfort or whatever inspiration you need to get through your own winter.

(Just, for the sake of my ego, pretend that you cared that I was here first.)