Tattoos getting a face-lift

New York

JO Galvis was 15 when she got a tattoo on the centre of her lower back. She had been fighting with her family and living at a friend's house. What better way to infuriate her parents?

Ms Galvis, who is now 29 and lives in New York City, grew up in Colombia, where she just walked into a tattoo parlour in Bogotá and glanced at a sheet of paper crammed with popular design choices that hung on the wall.

She liked one design of a Japanese character (the meaning of which she did not know) and a tribal tattoo with a black curvy design (the cultural meaning of which she did not know). She chose the tribal tattoo.

"I didn't think very much about what I was getting," Ms Galvis said.

Some 15 years later, Ms Galvis is the exhibitions and administrative assistant at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in Manhattan. She is no longer a rebell…