I was offended and outraged when I read Mark LaFlamme’s column July 21, “Color me curious,” not only for the negative representation he presented about tattoos themselves, but the many gender-assigned generalizations it included.

As a young woman who has four tattoos of my own, I find his statement on the “party girl” example to be completely chauvinistic and inconsiderate. I am a responsible, hard-working and respectful member of this community, and have been all my life. I will be a senior at Bates College in the fall and, upon my graduation in May 2011, I hope to pursue graduate school and eventually a career in the field of communications. Does that seem to match the “party girl” image?

The point that bothered me the most was LaFlamme’s reservation on how a tattoo can be so “perfectly symbolic and meaningful” that one would take it to the grave. Though I find all of my tattoos to be meaningful in their own unique way, two of them are exceptionally symbolic. I lost my father in May 2009 to suicide and felt getting a tattoo would be one way I could deal with my grief.

Tattoos are a form of expression, and are unique and meaningful for each person. While not every person who gets a tattoo may have the same reasoning as my own, tattoos are part of a person’s ability to express individuality while living in the 21st century.

Brittney French, Lewiston