I got my first tattoo last summer. A simple one, referencing a Walt Whitman poem on the back of my arm, but it’s
enough to strike up a conversation anytime it’s hot enough for me to wear short sleeves. And now that conversation will follow me to the ends of the earth, or at least until I get sick of teenage decisions and save up for
a coverup.
Tattoos at Penn mean the same things they do anywhere else—memorials, jokes, mistakes—but there’s something
special about getting inked at 18, 20, 22, when you’re in the midst of figuring out who you are and why that matters.
That’s why we asked Penn students what their favorite tattoo is and why. Whether for inspiration or as a warning, these tattoos represent what’s most meaningful to our community’s most creative students.
“I have ‘La Única’ tattooed on my upper arm. It translates to ‘the only one’ in Spanish. When I was a little girl, my grandfather would take me to school and we would always belt out singing regardless of the time. We would listen to his favorite band, Mana, and I’d show him some of my favorite songs. One day he looked at me and said, ‘We’re
so great’ (we definitely were not) and ‘We should start a band together.’ I laughed and asked what our band name would be, and he replied with ‘La Única’ because I was the only girl in his eyes.
—Kaitlyn Duardo (N ’26)
“I wanted a Bad Religion tattoo, but I wanted something personally meaningful and something that wouldn’t come across as abrasive as their logo might (LOL). The reason I went with this Against The Grain one isn’t just because it’s a great album, but because my high school senior yearbook quote was from the titular track. So, my high school yearbook has a Greg Graffin quote: ‘I seek a thousand answers; I find but one or two. I maintain no discomfiture, my path again renewed.’
I got the tattoo in May so I could graduate with it. So it’s not just to show love for my favorite band (and my mom’s favorite band!) but also a little celebration of graduating high school, starting college, etc. I guess that’s corny.
Maybe it’s cooler when I just say it’s because Bad Religion is my favorite band.”
—Marty Signes (C ’29), DP staffer
“[I] only have one but it’s a tattoo of my parents’ last names! My sister got it when she was 18 and I got it when I was 18! When our kids turn 18, we think it’d be cool if they got it as well.”
—Ethan Sun (C ’27), Street Features editor
“A week before I got my bat tattoo, I was the makeup designer for a show in Houston Hall. At one point when I was doing everyone’s makeup for a dress run, the entire cast and crew ran into the green room—there was a bat in the auditorium. I made the mistake of mentioning my tattoo appointment and the subject of it to some of the other people in the show, and it quickly became a bit that I had manifested the bat’s appearance. Sorry to everyone for cursing us with the appearance of a bat—my bad.”
—Cyrus Nininger (C ’29)
