First things first: face tattoos are badass. If you’re willing to let someone stab you in the face a million times with an inky needle because you permanently want to make your face look different, you are cool as shit in my eyes.
BUT, it is also my opinion that you should probably wait until you are maybe over 18 to make this significantly long-term decision.
A Hobart tattoo artist has become one of the first people to be convicted under new laws in Tassie that ban piercing and tattoos for people under 18, and has been handed a $750 fine for tattooing “family” on the cheek of a 17-year-old girl.
The maximum penalty under the laws is a $14,000 fine and a year in jail, but the 41-year-old was let off relatively easily thanks to the fact that the girl was not only 3 months away from being 18, but her mum was there watching the whole thing.
Ricky Howard, who had been running an illegal tattoo parlour in his garage, told the court that he had tried to talk the girl out of it, but also admitted that he had previously given the same girl a tattoo reading “never run faster than your guardian angel can fly” on her jaw, in addition to giving her another tattoo in 2014.
Howard reckons he both didn’t know that she wasn’t 18 and also didn’t know it was a crime to tattoo people under the age of 18.
We don’t have a picture of the girl or the tattoo but we do have this exclusive artist’s rendering:
What a world.
Source: ABC.
