Few tattoo artists tell their clients they could win a wet T-shirt contest. Then again, few tattoo artists are quite like Vincent “Vinnie” Myers.
In his shop in a modest strip mall in Finksburg, a half-hour drive from Baltimore, Myers specializes in tattooing nipples and areolas onto women who have undergone breast cancer surgery.
Using precisely mixed pigments, he creates a perfect three dimensional illusion of the real thing — and in doing so, enables women who have undergone mastectomies to feel fully like women once again.
Photo: AFP
“It’s far more rewarding than anything else I have ever done,” said Myers, 49, who has dedicated the last decade of his 28 years as a tattoo artist concentrating on post-op cosmetic tattoos.
He has treated about 3,000 breast cancer survivors so far, including many referred to him by surgeons at Baltimore’s prestigious Johns Hopkins medical center and other hospitals around the US.
“When it’s completed and they see the final results, most women feel very emotional because they realize: ‘The thing is over, I’m whole again,’” Myers said.
Myers, a Baltimore native, discovered tattooing when he was a US army medic in South Korea in the 1980s. In 2001, a friend asked him if he might tattoo some of his patients who had undergone breast reconstruction.
Typical of the women who have gone under the needle at Little Vinnies Tattoos is Susan, 58, an elegant retiree with a wish “to look as normal as possible.”
“I’m doing this for me. It makes you feel prettier,” she said as Myers pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves and prepared to get to work.
“Any complications? Any allergies?” the tattooist asked before carefully mixing pigments in tiny pots and joking that Susan “might win” a wet T-shirt contest once the tattoo is done.
“We’re going to go with, not peach, but more like taupe, a little bit more blue,” he said, before smearing a bit of pigment onto Susan’s fair skin to determine if he had mixed the exact color for her complexion.
“The perfect reconstructed breast doesn’t look like a breast without a nipple,” said Myers, whose fee ranges from US$350 to US$1,000 depending on the complexity of the task at hand.
“You get out of the shower in the morning, you look out at yourself in the mirror, and you have no nipples — there’s a huge mental impact,” he said. “It’s critical that the visual appearance is as close to normal as possible.”
Hospitals may also offer post-mastectomy tattoos, but Myers said they are typically carried out by nurses with no more than “a couple of days” training.
On average, it takes Myers two hours to complete his work, during which he will determine the color and size of the areolas of each patient.
“There will be some shade of color on the areola itself and a darker shade on the nipples because that is normally darker,” he said.
“Then you do a kind of gray shadow on the bottom side to highlight the top side so as to give it some depth ... using trompe l’oeil to make it look like it’s three dimensional.”
When he is not in Finksburg, Myers is often on the road, treating women in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston in South Carolina and the Saint Charles surgical hospital in New Orleans.
Myers reckoned that only a handful of his fellow tattoo artists do what he does, and in order to meet a growing demand he has already trained two others in the secrets of his unique craft.
About 200,000 cases of breast cancer are detected in the US every year. Half of them require breast reconstruction, even if surgeons using the latest techniques try to retain as much of the nipple area as possible.
It helps, Myers said, that his tattoo shop is just that — a tattoo shop, not a medical clinic.
Patients feel more relaxed “and you can have a little more fun here than you can at the hospital.”
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
COMFORT WOMEN CLASH: Japan has strongly rejected South Korean court rulings ordering the government to provide reparations to Korean victims of sexual slavery The Japanese government yesterday defended its stance on wartime sexual slavery and described South Korean court rulings ordering Japanese compensation as violations of international law, after UN investigators criticized Tokyo for failing to ensure truth-finding and reparations for the victims. In its own response to UN human rights rapporteurs, South Korea called on Japan to “squarely face up to our painful history” and cited how Tokyo’s refusal to comply with court orders have denied the victims payment. The statements underscored how the two Asian US allies still hold key differences on the issue, even as they pause their on-and-off disputes over historical
CONSOLIDATION: The Indonesian president has used the moment to replace figures from former president Jokowi’s tenure with loyal allies In removing Indonesia’s finance minister and U-turning on protester demands, the leader of Southeast Asia’s biggest economy is scrambling to restore public trust while seizing a chance to install loyalists after deadly riots last month, experts say. Demonstrations that were sparked by low wages, unemployment and anger over lawmakers’ lavish perks grew after footage spread of a paramilitary police vehicle running over a delivery motorcycle driver. The ensuing riots, which rights groups say left at least 10 dead and hundreds detained, were the biggest of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s term, and the ex-general is now calling on the public to restore their
RSS