Thread by @monaeltahawy

It's my birthday at the end of this month. My gift to myself will be more tattoos.

I got my first tattoos at a traumatic time. They were a gift to me for surviving. A form of deliberate beauty that could not be stolen from me.

feministgiant.com/p/deliberate-b…

In this TedXAmsterdam talk in 2014, I explain how tattoos helped me to heal.

#DeliberateBeauty

These were my first two tattoos--right arm in 2012 and left in 2013 #DeliberateBeauty

Have I healed? I don't know.

I write dangerously and heal slowly

feministgiant.com/p/write-danger…

I am considering these on my shoulder blades
#DeliberateBeauty #tattoos

"Any angle that you look at this woman, you see a pair of divine eyes looking back at you," Anne Austin

I've become increasingly obsessed with this woman whose mummy has revealed that it mostly women who were tattooed in ancient Egypt sciencealert.com/egypt-council-…

The researchers believe the mummy is of a woman between the ages of 24 and 35 years old who may have been a priestess to the Egyptian goddess Hathor.

cbc.ca/news/canada/mo…

“It seems that women were primarily being tattooed,” says Salima Ikram, Egyptologist

atlasobscura.com/articles/tatto… #DeliberateBeauty