My Dear Friends of Inked When i see my tattoos i like yeah for the most part i love i love them because i just feel like i see them as just an extension of my personality for me hi i’m fashion sometimes i model.
Sometimes i like you know do some painting do some drawing um make some clothes make music dj the list goes on my parents are both immigrants my dad’s from hong kong.
And my mom is from singapore so i grew up in a really like orthodox like mormon household it’s not like it’s like the mainstream moment so it’s not like giving um it’s not giving like commune and like sister wives the main like.
Things is that you know your body’s a temple and so they don’t you know drink don’t smoke don’t do drugs don’t even drink caffeine don’t have sex definitely don’t tattoo their bodies um only one set of piercings but only for girls.
Um yeah like it’s very very rigid when i was eight years old i found out that santa wasn’t real and i think that shook my whole world and my eight-year-old train of thought was just kind of like i’ve been lied to you for like an extensive period of time like.
Santa santa’s now we are uh god god god must not arrear so that was like my you know my eight-year-old um thought process critical thought process and from that point on i think i was a little suss.
Because of the mormon church as i grew up like i guess i wanted to like live my life a lot differently than what was prescribed for me you know i’m trans so obviously that’s like um it’s like a huge component in this religion are these like assigned.
Gender norms and roles and expectations so you know i’m like i was supposed to be a boy you know i kind of fell away from that world um and it was yeah really intense but there’s still some things that i feel like i kept with me like.
Like i was saying mormons have like this um obsession or like kind of like religious doctrine that your body is a temple and you know if you’re like i love i love that idea and um which is why i feel like i love.
Adornment and i love tattoos when i was like 17 like 16 17 i was at like a party with all of my like really young punk friends and they would like drink these things called sidewalk slams where they like mix mad dog in the 40.
Um which is like so disgusting and you know one day at a party at like 6 a.m for some reason i was like okay i want a tattoo and my friend i think was must have been really drunk um because it was the most painful.
Thing i ever experienced it was on my leg it said hk bb for hong kong baby this is stupid and i think from that point that’s when you know it happens is like you get one leads to another and then.
Becomes like an addictive habit that won’t stop my parents wanted to ascribe or like assimilate into this culture and so you know they didn’t teach me chinese and like literally so much cultural information was lost within one generation as a person i’m like kind of.
I’m like estranged from this part of my identity that is so close but you like get so far you know like i grew up going to asia like all of i have so many relatives there my behavior is would be like so misconstrued um and my parents wouldn’t like prep me you know.
Tell me like oh these are the customs like you’re supposed to like agree like your relatives like in a certain order there’s like a hierarchy there’s all of these rules and expectations and then like i don’t know because i’m raised in like this american environment.
There’s constantly this kind of tension i feel like with um within myself like and trying to like understand like yeah this component of me that i’m kind of a strange fam or like removed from for me.
Obviously like a way that i can understand things a lot better is like visually um and through like visual art and chinese culture is like filled with you know a lot of decorative art like everything almost ha is decorated with symbolic motifs i’m really into.
Like exploring and understanding these symbols um yeah and that translates to my tattoos i think growing up going to um asia and like going to.
Um like buddhist temples or like chinese like folk religion or taoist temples all of these temples it’s like you know it’s so vibrant and like filled with color and images like everywhere painted everywhere and like shrines and etc you know and so that was like super.
Formative for me and so when i wanted to cover um these tattoos i had like this that idea in mind that you know my body’s a temp blah blah blah and so i had these food dogs like tattooed on my legs they guard the entrance to like like a chinese temple usually you know to prevent any evil from.
Entering she feel like it’s like a funny um metaphor yeah so that’s how it began and then i think like there was just you know one and then two and then from that point on i just felt like you know everything should be like.
Symmetrical ish so this is like these are like both based on different chinese legends princess falls asleep underneath a cherry blossom tree and a cherry blossom falls on her forehead.
And leaves an imprint that’s like a abstract imprint that’s said to enhance her natural beauty so it was like a cosmetic trend for a woman to draw these shapes on um and they also would draw like you know during the tongue dynasty they.
Would draw like all sorts of other shapes if they were having their period they would put like two dots here um which you can see like on statues of like the sculptures from that time like they have some at the met um but yeah i don’t know i was also like always obsessed with like the idea of.
Permanent makeup and so i feel like that’s kind of why i was just like oh yeah do it for me a way to assert ownership over my body especially like.
Being like i’ve been like really traumatized in life and so this is kind of a way for me to take back what is like not necessarily like mine but like what is mine for a loan at this time if that makes sense no i would totally do it all over i have so many different.
Ideas or like concepts of things that like i would love instead i do actually love like full body suits like i don’t know anyone who doesn’t um but yeah like i love i also love just like having like singular like gigantic images instead of like for me i just have like so many like.
Intricate little ones sometimes that’s like a little annoying yeah i agree and maybe like in a few years i can get a clone and then i can start over you
As a first generation immigrant living in a strict Mormon household in the Pacific Northwest, Fashion grew up torn between two different worlds. While Fashion’s parents did everything they could to assimilate into American culture the connection to where they came from was frayed, but through getting tattooed with Chinese imagery Fashion has tried to rebuild that link. We spoke with the striking model about this and much more in this episode of Heavily Inked.
Welcome to Heavily Inked. In our newest series, we’re going to speak one-on-one with tattoo collectors and artists about what it means to be a heavily inked person. We’ll get deep as we go through the motivations behind their tattoo choices, the way they’ve been treated in society and much more.
Fashion: https://www.instagram.com/tightcorsetloosemorals/
WEBSITE: http://www.inkedmag.com/
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/inkedmag
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/inkedmag
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/inkedmag/