Tattoo Preview: Dr. Naomi Crummey

Students are not the only ones on campus who have cool tattoos. Chair of English and communications Dr. Naomi Crummey has the letters “V W I” tattooed on the inside of her forearm. Each of the letters are drawn with different fonts. The three letters on Crummey’s arm represent her three children: Valentin who is 12 years old, Willa who is 9 and Inigo who 7. Crummey said, “I got this tattoo around a year and a half ago. I had always wanted a tattoo, but I never knew what it should’ve been. I had my kids and I thought it was the time.

Chair of English & communications Naomi Crummey’s tattoo on the inside of her forearm.

My oldest son began to draw and play around with elaborate fonts. I thought that was pretty cool and would be a good idea for a tattoo.” Crummey was originally going to let Valentin design the whole tattoo but after protest from her daughter she decided she would have each child design their own initial. “Valentin’s ‘V’ with feathers was originally part of a more elaborate design that had to be made simpler by the tattoo artist so that it would not blur over time. “My daughter’s ‘W’ turned out well. At this time Inigo had just learned to write so he scratched out a little ‘I’ and the tattoo artist picked up the theme in order to finish it,” said Crummey.

Over the past couple of decades it has become more common for adults to have tattoos. According to the Pew Research Center, 40 percent of adults ages 26 to 40 have at least one tattoo and the total amount of Americans with tattoos is approximately 45 million or 14 percent. Despite the increase in popularity, tattoos can still be considered a stigma when looking for a job or trying to impress a potential employer. Crummey said, “ I wasn’t really worried about that, I’m pretty established here. If I was searching for a job, I might be reluctant to get a super visible tattoo. Here I have tenure, it’s a pretty secure position.”

Crummey disagrees with some employers’ judgment and said, “Body modification is a socially acceptable art form and identity expression in many parts of the world. You wouldn’t judge other people from different cultures from expressing themselves in other ways. It’s definitely a holdover from a much more conservative era.”