Removable Ink? Not For These Diehards

With fresh ink on her already-crowded forearm, tattoo artist Ellen M. Murphy is an unlikely conservative.

But Murphy, who has worked for the Chameleon Tattoo and Body Piercing Studio in The Garage since 2004, isn’t buying into the hype over the removable tattoo ink recently created by Dr. Richard R. Anderson, a Harvard Medical School Professor of Dermatology and Director of the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

According to the Boston-based Bentkover Center’s website, which specializes in laser treatment, a deeply colored tattoo might require up to 15 ten-minute treatments over two and a half years. Dr. Anderson’s ink, which should be available in the next two years, requires 1-2 treatments.

Murphy, who recalls when the shop helped with an earlier MGH tattoo research project in exchange for beer, is not impressed. Even if the ink increased business, Murphy said, “If it looked bad on the skin, I wouldn’t use it. We’re here to make it permanent. Removal isn’t our job.”

Potential tattoo-canvas Alyssa K. Davis ’09 agrees. “If I’m going to get a tattoo the reasoning would be that I want it to be a part of my body,” she wrote in an e-mail.

But some customers are encouraged by the new ink; Morgan L. Haven-Tietze ’08 and her younger sister will wait until it’s available to get matching shamrocks. “The new ink makes the decision more reversible, so if I ever decide I don’t want the design or the stigma, I can remove the tattoo,” she wrote in an e-mail.

But even if the ink’s imminent release floods parlors around the country, let’s be real: as Haven-Tietze reminds us, “It’s not like having an ink that is easier to remove means that getting a tattoo will be less painful!”