Elonna's Skeleton Represents Two Paths

Last month in Central Park, I met Elonna, who is a friend of my daughter, Jolee. Elonna was joining us in seeing The Tempest  at the Delacorte Theater.

It didn't take me long to notice one of  Elonna's tattoos on her left arm:

Elonna got this about four years ago during her sophomore year in college, at Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Elonna explained the origin of this tattoo:

"My freshman year of college I was at ... Simmons College studying biology and pre-medicine, and then I transferred to Boston University for costume design. So, I did a huge life shift at that point and I wanted to commemorate my time, both as costume designer and also as what my previous life was going to be ... I was thinking, a dress form, a mannequin, something like that ... and then I realized how popular that was a tattoo in my field of business, it's very very common to have dress forms and mannequins, I don't really know why, but I didn't really want to have just that.  I wanted something that incorporated the previous life that I was going to choose in it ... so I chose the skeleton because it's the human form and the human figure is what draws me in to these careers and that's kind of what interests me in both of them ... even though I don't want to work on the inside of bodies, I want to work on the outside ... and then I also thought him holding a doctor's bag, that's more really like to incorporate the dead dreams of becoming a doctor ... I told [the artist] that I didn't want it to be a very animated skeleton, I wanted it to be like one that's hanging in science classrooms that you had all throughout middle school." 

Out of curiosity, I asked Elonna if the skeleton had a name. She replied, "My mom calls him Mr. Bones, or Rex, because she hates the tattoo, but I don't really have a name for him.

Thanks to Elonna for sharing her cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.