If there is one thing that makes people hesitate to get a tattoo, it is the pain. Certain areas of the body are particularly painful and require a good dose of courage before they are tattooed.
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What the pros say
The best way to get advice is to ask a professional. Matt Victor, a professional tattooist of 20 years, gave about.com some information, which can be found in detail in the video above. According to him, soft areas are generally painful for everyone. So you'll have to grit your teeth if you want a tattoo on your inner thighs, for example, or on the inside of your elbow or under your arm.
But there is also a whole psychological element to consider. When it comes to this, everyone has their own opinions. For some people, looking at the tattoo reduces the pain, while others prefer to look away. All you have to do now is to see which category you fall into and determine your pain tolerance threshold. Don't worry, if you are in expert hands, everything will go smoothly.
The 15 most painful areas
According to professional tattoo artists, there are 15 areas of the body that are the most painful. On the scale of pain, in order, first is the torso, the upper back, the knees/elbows, the neck, then the feet and the hands. Next comes the wrist, face, stomach, inner thighs, and ribs.
Got all that? Because that’s not all. Let's move on to the 5 most painful parts of the body for getting a tattoo: the breasts are very sensitive, and women who are tattooed there regularly faint during the sessions; the inner thighs, a place rich in nerve endings; the armpits, same problem but with a longer healing time and risks of infection; the genitals, no need to go into detail... And finally the most painful part, the eyelids: most people scream and/or faint.
‘Embrace your pain’
Pain is even sometimes the goal sought by people when getting a tattoo: this is for example the case with the Brutal Tattoo Ritual. There, the objective is not aestheticism but the search for suffering, with the people getting tattooed sometimes filmed shaking or screaming in pain, even being insulted by the tattooist.
So it's understandable if you're not into this. The best advice is to choose your tattoo carefully and above all to know where you want it, by weighing the aesthetic aspect with your pain tolerance threshold. Otherwise, you'd better be prepared to be in for a hard time.
