For young feminists in the country of billions of people, tattoos have become a way for them to show their bravery and assert their sovereignty over their bodies.

In China, tattoos have long been associated with skull sweatshirt  stereotypes of thugs and bad girls. But today, that is changing. Some tattoo artists help women express themselves through ink strokes. 

The stories are told through

 The tattoo design ideas that Lingmeng received.The project received more than 100 entries. Chinese women share thoughts on empowerment, close relationships, female identity, reproductive issues and gender-based violence. Within a year, more than 30 participants had tattoos based on their ideas.

For Lingmeng, the stories are not only an inspiration for her tattoo designs, but also another way to promote women's voices and raise gender awareness in China. '

Lingmeng's artwork was displayed at a series of art shows in Chengdu last year. Her tattoo parlor also presents its own small exhibition.

“We wanted to provide a space where women could feel comfortable, safe, relaxed and undisturbed during the tattooing process. At the same time, we also want to break stereotypes about tattoo parlors,” she said. 

Eliminate stigma 

Traditionally in China

 tattooing is considered controversial. Filial piety in Confucianism holds that "children's skin belongs to their parents" and tattoos are despised by older generations. 

Women with tattoos are often gendered or stigmatized as bad girls. There is a growing crackdown on tattoo culture, including requiring taxi drivers with tattoos in Gansu province to remove ink from their bodies and banning tattoos in football.

On the other hand, tattoos are increasingly popular among the younger generation, who embrace them as a new art form and remove the stigma. In particular, women are using tattoos as a way to express their opinions.

Xiao Meili, a famous Chinese feminist activist, asked Lingmeng to design a tattoo for her in May 2021, after experiencing cyber attacks.

Xiao describes the tattoo as a ray of light: "I hope I live in an era where I don't go against the rules out of fear or besiege. There are so many things you can give up, give in or compromise, but you should never be part of the darkness. I wanted to use this tattoo to remind myself to always look towards the light.” 

Pan Jing, 28, who works at a technology funny hawaiian shirts  company in Beijing, gets a uterus tattoo on the inside of her arm as her mother prepares to have it removed because of an ovarian cyst.

“First of all, even if I don't want to have children, I think the uterus is a particularly important organ for women. Second, for me, my mother's womb is the first little house in my life. I hope to leave her memories on my own body, to always remember that I grew up there," she said. 

Pan added that her boyfriend  

was with her when she got the tattoo, but he didn't seem to understand why she did so.

“I think men still don't fully understand women's emotional needs. The men around me, including my boyfriend, always think that women with weird tattoos are bad, but my girlfriends rarely speak out."

Li Zhuoying (25 years old), a recent graduate in Shanghai, chose to get a human-machine hybrid tattoo to represent her feminist identity. While writing her college thesis, she read Simians, Cyborgs and Women by Donna Haraway and was inspired by feminist interpretations. 

“If women want the world to be completely gender-equal, it has to be a place where they no longer have the burden of having children. The way forward for women is to become mechanized creatures. This became the inspiration for my tattoo,” she said.

Raise awareness

Other tattoos designed by Lingmeng as part of the first project include a flower-shaped clitoris, which is described as "an organ that allows women to control their own sexual pleasure and liberate themselves from self-consciousness. traditional notions that their role in sex is only to serve men.”