When Josie Mae Lake leaves home for work in the morning, she looks very much the young professional. She usually wears a long-sleeved blouse and a nice pair of pants.
But underneath her work outfit is something you might be surprised to see on the body of a chemical engineer at a pharmaceutical company.
Lake, 30, is a human canvas of elaborate images in multicolored ink that she has spent more than three years and $22,000 creating. She still has another year to go. Why would someone endure all that pain at considerable expense?
“A big part of it when I was younger was to show that I could control my body and handle pain,” she said. “But now I want my outside to match my inside. I also think they’re beautiful.”
Lake, who lives in Alameda, is representative of the changing demographic of the people getting tattoos. She’s young, she’s a woman, and she works in a traditional occupation. In her case, she doesn’t show her tattoos at work. She has what is known as a business suit.
Outside of work, though, she is among the growing number of people who can be spotted sporting tattoos at the supermarket, walking down the street or at the gym. Tattoos are on faces, necks and are seen on arms and legs as “full sleeves.” It’s getting to the point that it’s unusual not to meet younger adults with a tattoo.
Almost half of all millennials and over one-third of Gen Xers have at least one, according to a 2015 Harris Poll.
It used to be that tattoos were associated with outlaws and sailors. They were frowned upon.
But over the past decade or so, tattoos have gone mainstream. Three out of every 10 Americans have one, compared with 2 out of every 10 just four years ago. About 70 percent of those with tattoos have more than one. And in another major shift, more younger women are getting inked than men. The tattoo industry has become one of the fastest-growing retail businesses in the country. The Bay Area is saturated with tattoo shops — much to the dismay of artists such as Ian OliverWheeler, who is working with Lake and was practicing the craft long before celebrities, athletes and reality shows such as “Miami Ink” helped make tattoos fashionable.
Every Friday, Lake goes to Apex on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland for her weekly session. Lake sought OliverWheeler out because of his specialty in traditional Japanese tattooing. OliverWheeler, who is a co-owner of Apex and is known as Horiakio, apprenticed in Sao Paulo under the Tsukasa tattoo family.
Lake has a ritual. She pulls out a blanket that she keeps at the studio. She asks for “loud, aggressive music” to give her mind something to focus on besides the pain. She exposes the appropriate body part, then she assumes the position on a massage table.
She grew up in Pescadero, a tiny farming community with just over 600 residents, in San Mateo County. Her mother had severe mental illness. Lake says her childhood was traumatic. She felt like she had no control over what happened to her. She says that getting tattooed has enabled her to regain control of her body.
Lake got her first tattoo when she was a student at UC Berkeley. It was an upside-down rose with the quote, “But he who dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose.”
She later got a molecule symbol to celebrate the A-plus that she’d gotten on a difficult chemistry test.
When a boyfriend was killed in a car crash, Lake got angel tattoos on her breasts to remember him. He had planned to get them before his death.
Lake has an elaborate tattoo on her back of a Japanese ghost story about a princess who ran away with an umbrella maker. When their son died, his spirit haunted an umbrella. The princess became so obsessed with the umbrella, she couldn’t let it go. The son became a demon embedded in her back.
“I wanted something like that because I wanted a representation of a demon coming out of my own back,” Lake said. “So it was kind of like a release of a demon in me.”
When she chooses to show her tattoos, some people look at Lake with sideways glances of disapproval. Others want to take selfies with her. Most people can’t comprehend the permanency of the ink. They ask, what if she hates her tattoos in 20 years?
“Even if I somehow magically don’t like the artwork,” she said, “I will always like the expression of who I am today when I got it done.”
Tammerlin Drummond is a columnist for the Bay Area News Group. Her column runs Thursday and Sunday. Contact her at tdrummond@bayareanewsgroup.com, or follow her at Twitter.com/tammerlin.