Tattoos on Women: Are They a Red Flag?

Recently we had a forum member asking about a girl he’s started dating, wanting to know if she’s girlfriend material or not. About her, he says:

Her first tattoo she got when she was 16 with her friends in school. On the inside of her lip which says ‘babygirl’ She’s a little bit embarrassed about that one. She got a couple other classier looking ones on the inside of her wrists and back of her ankles which look nice.

Another forum member referenced my 2017 article of yellow, orange, and red flags to watch out for in girls. One of the nine red flags I listed there was “more than one small tattoo.”

Here’s an excerpt from that article, in which I cite a bunch of the research on tattooed women:

[W]omen with tattoos are more impulsive than untattooed women, take more risks, and are also more likely to use drugs, shoplift, and have non-ear piercings (more on that in our next red flag). Women with four or more tattoos are 4x as likely to attempt suicide as women with three or fewer tattoos. And yes, your instincts are correct – they also engage in riskier sex. Remember, we said red flags are signs a girl is both nutty and easy, right?

Of course, as the years march by, more and more women are getting tatted up. According to the latest Pew survey, a whopping 56% of American women aged 18-29 have at least one tattoo.

Is it still the case that tattoos are a potential red flag in girls you want to date?

 

Tattooed Women: Are They Different?

The stereotype of tattooed women of course is that they sleep with more guys, more easily. But is that stereotype legitimate? A 2020 study found the following:

A sample of 814 women, both tattooed and non-tattooed, were recruited through a Western Canadian university research pool and various social media outlets to complete an online questionnaire assessing these attributes. Women with tattoos reported greater willingness to engage in uncommitted sexual relations, as well as higher endorsement of egalitarianism and sensation-seeking, relative to non-tattooed women. Among tattooed women alone, several personality and tattooing variables predicted sexual openness. Findings suggesting body tattooing as an indicator of sexual openness are critically discussed in relation to contemporary stereotypes surrounding femininity and sexuality.

So yes, it turns out the stereotype has legs. Tattooed women are more open to hookups and one-night stands, seek out pleasure and excitement more, and in addition are stronger believers in egalitarianism (e.g., “Smash the Patriarchy!”, etc. If you know anything about feminists, you know they generally hop in bed quick).

A 2023 study examining the surge in tattooed women, asking why more women are tattooing themselves (remember, we were at 56% of 18-29 y/os in 2023, and climbing), posited the following:

Gender has a significant role in bodily experience. Women’s bodies are more often subject to social evaluation than men’s and are often self-objectified. Women perceive their bodies in the way the social environment does and try to match social standards of appearance (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997). Swami and Furnham (2007) showed that women with tattoos are perceived as less attractive, alcohol abusers, and sexually promiscuous. Research on body perceptions with tattoos was also conducted by Hawkes et al. (2004). The researchers concluded that women with tattoos are perceived worse than those without, regardless of the size and visibility of their tattoos. Currently, an increasing number of women are opting for tattoos, which may indicate that tattooing may represent an attempt to regain control of one’s own body and create it according to one’s own rules. It is not clear how tattoos affect women’s bodily experience. On the one hand, they may cause a sense of agency and overcome empowerment; on the other hand, once tattooed and exposed to social judgment, they may worsen the way one experiences one’s body.

That is to say, women are tattooing their bodies up as a way to assert themselves and rebel, much in the way some women dye their hair pink, green, or blue, refrain from shaving their armpits or legs, forego bras, “free bleed”, and so on. Once again, they are “fighting for equality” (i.e., fighting against men) and rebelling against traditional social and sexual norms.

A separate recent study found tattooed women to be

• More likely to have mental health problems
• More likely to be smokers
• More likely to have spent time in jail
• More likely to have had a higher number of sex partners over the past year

A 2023 study revealed women with borderline personality disorder were around 2.5x more likely to be tattooed than the average woman. I doubt I need to tell regular readers why this is cause for alarm.

READ MORE: Girlfriend with Borderline Personality Disorder: You Must Escape

So yes, I think it’s fair to say that tattooed girls are different from girls who are untattooed.

The studies certainly support it – and unless your head is in the clouds (or you haven’t met many tattooed women… or many untattooed ones to compare them against!), these findings probably match your own impressions of such gals too.

 

Are Tattoos a Red Flag, Orange Flag, or Yellow Flag?

Unless you’re the type of guy who says, “Hell YES I wanna date an impulsive BPD girl with drug problems, shoplifting problems, lots of sex partners, jail time, and mental disorders who spends her time smashing the Patriarchy for a more woman-centric world!” tattoos should at least serve as some kind of flag that a girl deserves closer scrutiny.

That doesn’t mean you need to instantly screen her out. It just means they should serve as a signal that you need to take a closer look at this gal.

Any time we are dealing with flags and indicators, we are dealing with probabilities. Can you meet a girl with zero tattoos who is batshit crazy and terrible girlfriend material? Absolutely. Can you meet a girl whose body is covered head-to-toe in tattoos yet who is 100% sane and a really great girlfriend? It’s possible she might be out there! But as you go from zero tattoos to many tattoos, you are faced with a rising probability of all those potential downsides tattoos are associated with.

The easiest way to think about it is, “The more tattoos a girl gets, the larger the tattoos are, the more provocative the tattoos are, and the more prominently she displays the tattoos, the more likely she is to have some or many of these qualities that probably aren’t ideal in a long-term mate.”

In other words, a girl with no tattoos is a safer bet than a girl with a few small, vanilla tattoos on her wrists or ankles, who is in turn a safer bet than a girl with a tattoo sleeve, who is herself a safer bet than a girl with a tattooed neck or face.

As tattoos increase in number, size, and provocativeness, the odds and severity of the problems associated with tattoos go up too.

That doesn’t mean those problems are definitely there. It just means they are increasingly likely to be there.

 

Tattoos as a Screening Tool

Tattoos can serve as a useful screening tool. When you go out to pick up girls for one-night stands, for instance, you’re likely to learn with time and experience it can be useful to home in on visibly tattooed girls. Visible tattoos serve almost like a billboard advertising a woman’s potential sexual availability. The more tattoos there are, the more prominent they are, and the more provocative they are, the louder the advertisement. That’s not a guarantee she’ll go home with you… but it does help your odds.

If you are looking for a girlfriend, tattoos may serve as warning signs – or as invitations, depending on what you’re after.

For instance, the Pew survey shows tattoos vary quite a bit based on education and socioeconomic class:

• 37% of Americans who haven't graduated college have tattoos
• 24% of Americans with a bachelor's degree have tattoos
• 21% of Americans with a postgraduate degree have tattoos

• 43% of lower-income adults have tattoos
• 31% of middle-income adults have tattoos
• 21% of upper-income adults have tattoos

I’m a pretty smart guy with a college education from a decently ranked school and who runs his own business. When I look for girlfriends, I am looking for (among other qualities) girls with postgraduate degrees and decent careers (i.e., professional women). If a girl doesn’t have these things, we can still have fun together, but I won’t be up for a relationship with her.

There are some educated, higher-earning ‘wild child’ type girls who’ve bucked the trends and gotten a tattoo or two. But only about a fifth of the highly educated career girls have. The vast majority of the girls in this category are untattooed. So when I’m screening for a girlfriend, one easy shorthand is to just see if she has tattoos: if she does, I know she isn’t what I want for that role, with about 80% confidence.

But what if you’re a lower class guy yourself, working the trades? You’re probably not looking for a career girl with a master’s degree. In fact, you may not even care if she has an education beyond high school. You might PREFER that (opinions on college educations have been souring lately… honestly for pretty good reasons)! In that case, a tattoo or two might actually be a promising sign!

Remember: 56% of American women ages 18-29 have tattoos now. Over half of our American male readers are going to end up in LTRs with tatted girls, just statistically speaking. These tattooed girls are more likely to be women with problems than they would be if they weren’t tattooed – BUT they’re also more likely to simply be regular girls of lower socioeconomic classes and levels of education.

Thus, we can see different uses for tattoos as screening tools:

• Picking up for one-night stands: the more numerous, prominent, and provocative the tattoos, the more likely she is to be down for a quick fling.

• Screening for conservative girlfriends: girls with no tattoos at all are more likely (than tattooed girls) to be sexually and behaviorally conservative, with fewer partners and better mental health.

• Screening for educated/higher socioeconomic class girls: girls with fewer or no tattoos are more likely to fall into this camp.

• Screening for less educated/lower or middle class girls: girls with a few tattoos are more likely to belong to this group.

If, for instance, you’re a guy with just a high school degree working the trades, looking for a girl of a similar class, but still not too wild, a girl with a couple of tattoos but nothing TOO crazy is fairly likely to be a good fit.

Thus, the way you use tattoos is going to depend very much on what it is you’re looking for.

 

Tattoos Are a Starting Point; But You Must Still Screen!

Whether she’s tatted up or tattoo-free, remember: whatever flags or signals you see or don’t see, they’re merely the starting point!

You still need to actually screen her and investigate her personality and past to see if she’s what you’re looking for in a mate.

READ MORE: Why Her Past Matters If You Want Something Serious

Obviously, if all you’re going for is a one-night stand, this matters a whole lot less.

Even then, personally, I am wary of overly tattooed women, simply because there are risks if she is too broken. If I’m considering picking up a girl with a lot of tattoos, I will probe her dating history a fair bit at some point in the interaction before I take her home, just to see if there’s anything very messy in there that starts ringing alarm bells for me. If she talks about abuse, rape, trauma, jealous exes, getting some guy in trouble, or anything along those lines, I will hit the eject button (in the most gentlemanly way possible, mind you).

The point is: tattoos or no tattoos, use what you see as a helper to your screening – but you still must screen.

You never know when you’ll run into the untattooed girl who’s a complete psycho, or the girl with a tattoo sleeve who’s a gem. Probability is probability, and in every camp, there are always exceptions.

Yours,
Chase Amante