Her two beloved children still look up to her, despite people teasing her and calling her a ‘freak.’
This woman has no natural physical deformities. Instead, she is covered head to toe in ‘prison-style’ tattoos, and despite being unable to find work and facing verbal abuse every time she leaves the house, she refuses to stop getting new tattoos, saying she is a drug addict.
Keep reading to learn more about this mum and how she serves as an example to her children!
Melissa Sloan is a 46-year-old woman from Wales who has no regrets about her toxic 26-year relationship with the tattoo gun. She has been tattooing since she was 20. Now, Sloan has come to terms with being shunned by society, and although she understands that the more she does, the harder her life becomes, she still refuses to stop.
“It’s like if you tried a cigarette or a drink, you’d become addicted. I can’t stop, it’s addictive, at least for me. I just can’t stop,‘ Sloan said, adding that since tattoo parlours started turning her away because she was ’unable to help‘, she got her own kit. She continued: ’I carry a tattoo gun with me in the boot of my car, I do them in the car or wherever.”
Although Sloan cannot find work — her body and face are now covered in somewhat sloppy ink — she continues to ask her boyfriend to give her three ‘prison-style tattoos’ every week. She has over 800 tattoos in total.
Sloan said that many years ago she worked as a toilet cleaner, but today she is denied such roles.
“I can’t find a job. They won’t hire me. I applied for a job as a toilet cleaner where I live, and they didn’t hire me because of my tattoos… People said I’ve never had a job in my life, but I did have one once, and it didn’t last long.‘ She continues: ’But if I were offered a job tomorrow, I would go and work — I would accept the offer.”
Not only can Sloan not find a job, but she says she is treated like an outcast, and every time she steps outside her door, she is subjected to verbal abuse and ridicule, with people pointing and staring at her.
‘Worse than that, the more children I have, the more they think I’m abnormal. They jump out of the way, and I think, “Why are you doing that?”. It’s awful,’ she says. ‘I expected this from life, I can’t conform to people because I like being myself, and I will always be myself.’
In addition, Sloan claims that she is not allowed into local bars and is banned from attending school events in which her two young children, aged eight and ten, may participate. But even that doesn’t stop her.
‘My children say, “Mum, they’re looking at you,” and I say, “Don’t pay any attention to them,”’ says the body art enthusiast, adding that her children sense the negative attitude towards her. ‘They say my children will run away when they grow up, and it’s just heartbreaking.’
Influencing her children and encouraging them to use her as a role model, Sloan’s children are already into body art.
‘They put some on their arms last night, but now they have school, so they’ll have to take them off,’ Sloan says, allowing her children to get temporary tattoos and promising to get them permanent ones in the future. ‘I tell them that when they grow up, they’ll have better ones.’
Before she got her tattoos, she was an average-looking woman. She shared photos of her face before the tattoo on her Instagram account. Now she looks barely recognisable if you knew her back then!
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