Poisonous Tattooed Tree Frog Ladies

I’ve had men say a lot of wild things about my body over the years. That’s just the reality of being a woman. No matter what we do, we get critiqued: we’re either too skinny or too fat; dressed too revealing or like a prude; wearing too much makeup or not enough. But of all the bizarre things men have ever said about my body, the strangest started after I began getting heavily tattooed. These comments compared me, and other tattooed women, to poisonous frogs. 

The first time I heard this was from a guy on Instagram who was super grossed out by my tattoos. He said my tattoos were a form of aposematism that instinctively repulsed people. Personally, I don’t care one way or another if someone likes my tattoos. But it did get me wondering what exactly aposematism is and why men use it to justify trying to publicly shame and humiliate tattooed women.  

Strawberry poison-dart frog (Oophaga pumilio or Dendrobates pumilio)
Photo Credit Pasha Kirillov

Aposematism is an evolutionary adaptation where animals warn predators, through a myriad of physical attributes, that they are not worth attacking due to their strong internal defense mechanisms.* While there are many examples of aposematism, the most famous is the bright coloration of poison dart frogs, which signals their toxicity to predators. The two are correlated: the more brightly colored the frog, the more poisonous it is. There are many species of poison dart frog, which are indigenous to Central and South America, but the most dangerous of these is the golden poison frog. Bright yellow, orange, or mint green in coloring, these tiny creatures produce an alkaloid so lethal that the equivalent to two or three grains of salt will kill a human. 

Pretty cool, right? I certainly thought so, when I first read up on aposematism. What I was less sure about was what these adorable and deadly South American frogs had to do with tattooed women.

According to my commenters, tattoos on a woman are a human form of aposematism: like the bright colors of the poison dart frog, heavy tattoos are a warning that a woman is “poisonous” in personality and should be avoided romantically and sexually. This subconscious, evolutionary signal is, apparently, why these men find women with tattoos so unattractive.

There are so many reasons why this is ridiculous, but let’s just start with the obvious.

First of all, women aren’t frogs, and the way one species advertises its defense mechanisms is very different from the way other species do. 

Secondly, lots of people find women with tattoos attractive, or at the very least, not repulsive. 

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, aposematism is meant to detract dangerous predators, not mates. Being brightly colored and poisonous doesn’t keep male and female poison dart frogs from gettin’ some; it keeps them from getting eaten. While the men who comment on my Instagram might think they sound smart, all they’re doing is revealing they don't have a basic grasp on the concept of aposematism.

“Being brightly colored and poisonous doesn’t keep male and female poison dart frogs from gettin’ some; it keeps them from getting eaten. ”

Although it does beg the question: if, for a moment, we choose to believe tattoos are aposematic, then doesn’t it follow that anyone who finds our tattoos repulsive is a danger to us? Aren’t, then, women’s tattoos doing exactly what aposematic patterns are supposed to do?
Aren’t they scaring away our predators--our male predators?

“A” is for Aposematism

***

When I was younger, before I started getting tattooed, I had to put up with a lot of unwanted male attention. I think most young women can relate to this. I never really minded when men would shoot their shot, as long as they could take rejection politely and graciously. The problem was, more often than not, they couldn’t. My teens and twenties were spent putting up with a lot of guys who couldn’t take no for an answer, and sometimes, when they were very adamant about it or even enraged if a fawning “no thank you” had to be made stronger by a firmer “NO!”, it could get really scary, even dangerous for me. 

Things did change after #metoo. I noticed that consent became a much more commonplace part of flirtation and courtship, but it was still hard to feel safe. For me, the biggest change in how men approached me occurred when I began to get tattooed, and especially after I started my body suit. 

I never thought of tattoos as a way to be more or less attractive to men. They were always about expressing myself and wanting to find a style that was unique to me. And while tattooed women are certainly fetishized--and deal with stereotypes of being hypersexual or kinky--I found that once I started getting tattooed, I received far less unsolicited attention from men. The men who have continued to approach me have done so in more thoughtful, respectful, and inquisitive ways than those in the past. They have wanted to know about my decision to get a body suit or have had questions about the process. And while I can’t say the unwanted sexual attention has entirely disappeared, it has greatly diminished.

But why is this? As fun as it is to joke about being a poisonous frog, I don’t actually think there’s a pseudoscientific evolutionary reason behind fewer men hitting on me and refusing to take no for an answer. I think it’s just good, old-fashioned sexism. 

Many of the comments that dovetail with the poisonous frog ones are those that chastise me for “ruining” my “good looks”. These all come from men and are often in the vein of “I would have fucked you before you got your tattoos, but now I wouldn’t.” I believe these comments come from the patriarchal view that women should remain pure, “natural,” and--the subtext, in my opinion--virginal. This thinking stems from the same dangerous cultural narrative that is also responsible for the “trad wife” phenomenon: women should be pure, obedient creatures, who live to serve their husbands and children, not free beings who choose what to do with their bodies and how to adorn them. Because that’s the thing: a woman with a lot of tattoos is loudly and proudly telling the world that she, and she alone, has agency over her body. And I can see why a lot of sexist guys don’t like that. I can even see why they need to disguise their sexism as “scientific.” But I’m not buying it.

The other comment I hear a lot of, and which often accompanies accusations of aposematism, is that women who get tattoos have “daddy issues.” Personally, I have a great relationship with my dad, and after tattooing hundreds of people from all walks of life, I think I can definitively say there isn’t a correlation between tattoos and absent or abusive fathers. What always troubles me about this is that the same is never applied to men. I’ve never seen an instance of a heavily tattooed man being told he has “mommy issues” or that he’s “wearing his trauma.” This just seems to be another way for men to try and tell tattooed women that there’s something wrong with us; that they find us repulsive; unfuckable.

And you know what? I’m fine with that. Not only would I never be interested in a guy who thought that way, but I also just don’t live to be attractive to men. That’s pretty low on my list of life goals. Much lower than finding a passion and excelling at it, caring for my loved ones, and being a morally good person. Why worry about being attractive to all men and those men in particular? Really, these guys are doing me--and all tattooed women--a favor by commenting on how disgusting we are. Because before I got tattooed, I didn’t know how to easily spot those guys. They might have appeared nice enough--until I rejected them, of course. But now that I’m heavily tattooed, it’s as if I’ve filtered them out. And I’m pretty sure that the same men who like to aggressively tell women they’re unattractive are the same ones who like to aggressively tell them they are--even if the woman isn’t interested. So if my tattoos are filtering out the kind of men who don’t take no for an answer, the kind of men who want me to remain “pure” and “natural,” the kind of men who prey upon women, then I’m pretty happy about that. Afterall, they probably don’t realize that I’m not single and looking anyway. My husband, who has only two small tattoos and little interest in getting any more, married me when I had quite a few tattoos already. Then, from the start of my body suit transformation through to the end, he’s loved me all the same. It’s almost as if tattoos did in fact filter unwanted men away, leaving enough space for him to find me.  

“It’s almost as if tattoos did in fact filter unwanted men away, leaving enough space for him to find me.  ”

The men who say tattooed women are like poisonous frogs because we repel men mean this as an insult. What they don’t get is that repelling men--or a certain type of man--after a lifetime of unwanted attention feels great. Who wouldn’t want to be a poisonous frog?!

So if you’re a tattooed woman reading this, and you’re fed up with the trolls and the constant critiques, I want you to know that you’re not alone. I know how exhausting it can be; I know how scary it can be. But I hope you don’t let it bother you too much. You and I, and all the tattooed ladies out there, we are a tribe of poisonous frogs, and we can sit out here on our leaves in the Amazon, unbothered and thriving, admiring our vibrant, poisonous colors, scaring off all the men who want to hurt us.

Photo Credit Dan Dzurisin

*It is worth noting, for those on the internet who get this wrong, that aposematism does not refer exclusively to bright coloration or to toxicity. Skunks, for instance, are considered aposematic, because the black and white stripes along their tales warn of their powerful defensive smells. 

Sources Cited

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aposematism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_poison_frog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_dart_frog

https://www.aquariumofpacific.org/onlinelearningcenter/species/golden_poison_dart_frog