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As someone who got a dolphin tattooed on her right hip at the tender age of 17, it won’t shock you to hear that I regret that ill-thought out decision.
It’s not that I have anything against tattoos, I love them on other people. It’s just that well… I have a dolphin on my hip.
Related: You can tattoo your eyeballs. But that doesn’t mean you should.
But there is hope for those of us suffering from tattoo regret. One Canadian student, Alec Falkenham, has developed a pain-free tattoo removal cream that costs less than six bucks.
According to The Independent, the cream works by targeting the inked white blood cells in your skin called macrophages. It essentially encourages new cells to take over and replace the old tattooed ones, carrying the pigment away through the body’s lymph nodes, which in turn slowly fades the tattoo.
Related: How can a massive tattoo still look pretty and feminine? Like this.
As the cream is still in its testing phase – he’s been trialling it on tattooed pig’s ears with great success – Falkenham can’t yet tell how many applications it will take to completely fade, say a blue and green dolphin. But he estimates that it will only cost four cents per square centimetre – or roughly $6 for a 10-centimetre by 10-centimetre area.
Six dollars and zero pain? Sign me up. I’d be PicoSure-lasering my tattoo off right now if I wasn’t pregnant. Except my editor Jenny Valentish (who incidentally has many magnificent tattoos) disagrees, she thinks I should keep my dolphin.
Here’s how she tried to convince me to keep it via our office chat program:
Jenny Valentish So, a dolphin is your spirit animal, right? That’s cool. I am planning on getting an ibis on my leg.
Haha! Sadly no, I have no affinity with the dolphin.
It's was a spur of the moment thing.So it could just as easily have been an inverted cross?
I literally walked in and chose it off the wall in five minutes.
I wasn't even drunk.But you WERE 17. Did this esteemed tattooist not check your age?
He didn't! And it's a very reputable parlour, not far from our office now. I never got carded at pubs back then either, maybe I've always looked 100 years old.
If it's not far from the office you should go back and get a cover-up, not get rid of it. Nearly ALL my existing tattoos are cover-ups of shite tattoos. When you cover up a shite tattoo with another shite tattoo is when it starts to become a problem.
In theory, that sounds like an excellent idea but it's already kinda big - well, big enough to poke out of my bikini on the beach.
Does it look like stray pubes from a distance?
No, it's circular. Think: a dolphin diving over a celtic ocean. Told you it was bad.
But that 17-year-old you is still in there somewhere. You should honour her bold choices.
CARPE DIEM. (Don’t get ‘carpe diem’ though)
I had Carpe Diem on a toe ring in the 90s. It could have happened.
But back to the dolphin. Don’t you think you would be sad if it went?
Only if it left a scar worse than the original. At the moment (being 8 months pregnant) it's turning into a fat whale.
It snapped back after the first time I was pregnant, but I'm not sure I'll be so lucky this time...I'm just not sure about this miracle cream though. Is it really thought to work? Does it take out the pigmentation of your skin as well as the pigmentation of your tattoo?
That's a risk I'm willing to take Jenny! I'm already a shade of bright white. I figure it can't be that bad.
The other obvious way around this is to forge a new infinity with dolphins. Sea Shepherd are always looking for volunteers.
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