Coach Lacy Beckler stands outside the P.E. locker room as she takes attendance with her iPad. All her students watch, but none see the four tattoos on her hands. Out of the nine tattoos Coach Beckler has, eight appear in white ink, making them visible only when pointed out.

Students and teachers like Coach Beckler have decorated their skin with tattoos.

“Mine aren’t noticeable,” Coach Beckler said. “I was with the volleyball girls for a whole season and none of them knew. The only way they found out was when one of my girls was watching me write down stats and saw one on my hand.”

According to Assistant Principal Zelmarian Ready, MISD allows teachers and students to display their tattoos, even if other places consider tattoos against dress code.

“We are following the district teachers’ handbook,” Ms. Ready said. “There is no direct statement about tattoos in there. It’s a gray area in the handbook.”

English teacher Ms. Jamie Dorsett has also decorated her body with nine tattoos commemorating important family events and memories.

“Your body is a canvas and tattoos are a way of customizing your canvas — a way of decorating your own skin,” Ms. Dorsett said.

Ms. Dorsett got her first tattoo, a flower on her hip, when she turned 18. After four hours of horrible pain, she couldn’t imagine going through the process again.

“Mine was on my back, so anytime it got next to my spinal cord the more painful it was,” Dorsett said, “It felt like a vibration and a scratch at the same time. Afterwards, it felt like a sunburn someone had scratched.”

Ms. Dorsett now has eight more tattoos. She compared getting a tattoo to giving birth.

“It’s painful, but women forget about the pain and still have more children,” Ms. Dorsett said.

Coach Beckler and Ms. Dorsett both received their first tattoos as legal adults, but many students have gotten tattoos before meeting the legal age requirement. Until 2013 when the law was changed, Texas allowed minors to get tattoos with the consent of a legal guardian. The Texas Health and Safety Code states tattooing a person under the age of 18 acts as a Class B misdemeanor. The only exception to the law would be if a parent consents to tattoo over a previous obscene, lewd or gang-related tattoo, as specified under Sec. 146.012 (a-1).

Senior Dorian Ford inked his skin with his mother’s consent for the first time at the age of 14 and at least once every year since.

“At first she didn’t want me to get a tattoo,” Ford said. “But as I got older, she was cool with it.”

Ford’s mother took him to the tattoo parlor, signed his consent form and left him there to get inked.

Seniors Jessica Mindrup and Madison Lindsey both got tattoos underage as well, but they didn’t get parental consent.

“My dad’s friend does tattoos,” Lindsey said. “[He] doesn’t work at a parlor, he just knows how to do them.”

Mindrup had hers done by a former tattoo artist who no longer worked in a parlor. Mindrup and Lindsey both trusted a friend, well-educated in the art of tattooing, to do it for them. Mindrup wants to get another tattoo despite the new law.

“I have a year to wait until I’m 18,” Mindrup said. “I’ll probably just go back to the same guy.”

Mindrup plans to get a scripture inked in one line down her ribcage and considers waiting one year out of the question.

“I don’t want to wait,” Mindrup said. “I just like tattoos.”

Senior Chelsey Malone also plans on getting inked.

“I have a family friend that does them,” Malone said. “If he comes in town in December he’ll do it. If not, I’ll wait ’til I’m 18.”

FALS teacher Jayme Schroeder, with tattoos herself, feels students don’t have good reasons for getting tattoos.

“I think students just get them because everyone else is getting them,” Ms. Schroeder said. “They don’t have a meaning behind it.”

Ms. Ready, a woman without tattoos, said she thought students got tattoos because of peer pressure. Pressure could be related to the increase in acceptance of tattoos in our society. In 2003, 16 percent of adults in the United States said they had at least one tattoo. In 2012, the number had risen to 21 percent.

“It’s more accepted in our society today, more common for people to have them, even doctors and lawyers,” Ms. Dorsett said. “When I was in high school no one had a tattoo. Now it’s not uncommon for students to have tattoos.”

Tattoos have been around for quite a long time. Even Ötzi the Iceman, the oldest human body in existence, has tattoos. Evidence suggests that tattooing and acupuncture were thought of as the same 5,300 years ago (as a way to alleviate pain), revealing the meaning behind the Iceman’s tattoos. Today, peer pressure and an accepting society provoke students to get inked.

“A few of mine don’t have any meaning,” Lindsey said. “I just got them because I wanted one.”

However, all three students had a meaningful tattoo dedicated to a lost loved one.

“I got the words ‘I will always have you in my heart’ tattooed on my collar bone,” Lindsey said. “It was in memory of my uncle who passed away.”

Ford has angel wings tattooed on his chest in memory of his grandfather, and Mindrup has the date of her aunt’s death tattooed on her wrist in Roman numerals. But sometimes adults worry about teenagers’ ink decisions.

“I look at students with regret when they have tattoos,” Coach Beckler said. “They’re still finding themselves. I’m afraid they didn’t make a mature choice.”

All three students said they regret none of their tattoos, but Ms. Dorsett and Coach Beckler regret at least one of theirs.

“Two of them I got when I was 18,” Beckler said. “They have no meaning, I was just too young.”

Coach Beckler and Ms. Dorsett are part of only 14 percent of Americans that regret any of their tattoos. Ms. Dorsett regrets the tattoo of a dragonfly on her ankle.

“I didn’t put enough thought in to it,” Ms. Dorsett said. “I think I just wanted another tattoo so I settled, which you should never do with something permanent on your body.”

Coach Beckler believes all people should be treated equally no matter why they got their tattoos.

“I don’t have any judgment of any other person,” Coach Beckler said. “Whether it’s art or has a meaning behind it, they deserve just as much respect as anyone else.”