That’s a photo of a brand new tattoo on the arm of a nine-year-old girl.
The tattoo artist, who goes by the Instagram handle of “Cutzsosa,” posted a video of him giving the girl the permanent brand, and now he’s shocked that he’s getting a bad reaction on social media.
Yes, he’s an idiot. And an Ethics Dunce.
Now, it seems clear that the girl’s parents are worse: Cutzsosa says the girl and her parents traveled to his tattoo parlor, the Black Onyx Empire Tattoo parlor in Yuma, Arizona, from out of state specifically to get her the tattoo she wanted. What she wanted was a portrait of Donald Trump on her neck, and apparently her loving parents were determined to give their little darling what she desired. The artist claims he talked the girl into letting him ink a US flag on her arm instead. He thinks he deserves credit for that, since the neck-tattoo of Trump would probably get her beheaded in California. This is currently the basis of his Rationalization #22 (“There are worse things”) excuse for putting a tattoo on a child who cannot give informed consent for, well, anything, except maybe puberty blockers, but that’s “gender affirming care,” see, so it’s benign.
All 50 US states have laws banning tattoo artists from putting their art on minors, but some enlightened states like Arizona allow it for children who get their parents’ approval because, after all, parents are responsible and mature, and would never authorize any one to put a neck tattoo of Donald Trump on…oh. Right. Still, Sosa didn’t do anything illegal, but, we are told, “some of his peers wonder if his decision was an ethical one.”
Gee, ya think? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the average tattoo artist has the ethical acuity of a crack dealer. “It is one of the most frustrating things about our career field and in Arizona where it has no regulations,” Ben Shaw with the Alliance of Professional Tattooists said. “It can give us professionals a bad reputation. If you see a 10-year-old child with a professional tattoo and they say they got it at a tattoo shop, that degrades us as a whole.”
Yes, Ben and that’s because any profession that needs published regulations to let its members know that it’s unethical to tattoo a minor with or without parental approval is not to be trusted. (Incidentally, what’s stopping your organization from promulgating an ethics code?)
Regulations and rules don’t make conduct unethical, the conduct is unethical whether there is a rule against it or not. Even professions with extensive ethics codes, like the legal profession, concede that there are always going to be situations not covered by the regulations, and in such cases it falls to the lawyers involved to use their personal values and basic ethical principles to decide what to do.
I almost typed that lawyers by training have better backgrounds for making ethics calls than tattoo artists. I’m sorry, I must have blacked out for a moment…
“It’s not like I tattoo 9-year-olds every day,” the inkster whines. Good, that’s another rationalization. “I don’t tattoo my kids. I’m not promoting kids to come and get tattoos.” Okaaaay, and what does that tell you? Hint: you don’t do it to your own kids because you know it’s wrong. You figured out that it would be wrong to inflict a Trump tattoo on a kid—why did you stop there?
‘I’m getting a lot of hate from it. My employees are getting hate from it. My business, I’m getting so many bad reviews on Google,” Cutzsosa says. And that’s because you deserve it. Here’s something Cutzsosa can do to make amends: report the girl’s parents to the child protective services in their home state before they talk someone into putting J.D Vance on her forehead.
A tattoo artist code of ethics should contain several elements including the requirement of spelling lessons and basic competence. (I’d be happy to write one for a reasonable fee.) A good beginning, however, would be four, simple, famous words: “First do no harm.”
Ethics Alarms 
This is another sign of the movie Idiocracy coming true. Personally, I have nothing against tattoos, in fact, I have a few myself. I got mine before they were popular (well outside of the Navy and prison, I was in the Navy). While the kid could get the tattoo removed, it is still stupid, and that kid is not really being a kid and her parents have gone along with it. The tattoo artist should have NEVER done the tattoo even with parental permission. His poor choice will cost him more than turning a 9-year old away.
I’m a bit surprised Sosa didn’t throw in № 15 into the mix: ‘if I didn’t do it, then somebody else would ‘. Perhaps another tattooist would have, or perhaps a public refusal on Sosa’s Instagram site would have guaranteed enough negative publicity to any tattooist that would have considered the job to refuse instead. Enough tattooists refuse, the parents get frustrated and give up the project, and the kid isn’t left with a painful reminder of her parents’ failure to parent.
Parental Consent has been evolving of late, and not necessarily in the direction of strengthening parental involvement.
One area where parental consent remains a factor is for aspiring underage tattoo recipients.
“According to data through March 2015 compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 45 states have laws prohibiting minors from getting tattoos, with the majority of those states allowing it if there’s parental consent. For example, Florida law requires written, notarized consent of a minor’s parent or legal guardian in order to tattoo a minor.”
Aspiring underage abortion recipients? Not so much.
Per the Guttmacher Institute: “36 states require parental involvement in a minor’s decision to have an abortion. 21 states require only parental consent; 3 of these require both parents’ consent. 6 states require both parental notification and consent. 10 states require only parental notification; 1 of these requires that both parents be notified.
Nationwide it’s easier, or at least not as difficult, for minors to get an abortion than it is for them to get inked.
PWS
Yes, although we might disagree, society and the law have very different views on what a girl of that age is capable of consenting to.
Abortion? Yes
Being chemically castrated and given cross-sex hormones? Yes
Having sex with over 15 Pakistani men in a parking garage? Yes*
tattoo? No
smoking cigarettes? No
smoke marijuana? ‘No’ (but really not that bad, should be OK)
It is really difficult to explain to someone why the activities above are OK, but some aren’t. It isn’t rational, they have to be memorized. So, for the masses that follow the mainstream media and trust what their public school teachers tell them, it is almost impossible for them to comprehend why the tattoo above is really wrong.
*part of the ‘Asian grooming gang scandal’, the men were acquitted because the judge stated the girl could not prove that she didn’t consent because there was no video of the incident despite the fact that she was less than 12 years of age.