Gender Differences in Intimate Ink Designs and Prison Culture

Some tattoos of women can only be seen in bed.

In Russia, male and female criminality exist as if they were separate entities. On the one hand, female criminals help criminals from the stronger sex to commit their unlawful acts, and on the other, the mores and concepts of the fairer sex differ sharply from the male ones. For example, a female thief, even respected among colleagues in the profession, has no right to attend the gatherings of criminal authorities. In female prisons there is not as much segregation by "suits" as in male prisons, they are more liberal in terms of same-sex love, not counting passive lesbians as disadvantaged in relation to other inmates.

Naturally, the difference between inmates of opposite sexes can be found by studying tattoos.

Firstly, female tattoos are much poorer in variety and content than male ones. Tattoos made at a high artistic and professional level are much less common. After all, they are usually done by men and very rarely by women.

Images of churches, trefoil ace, madonna with a child, skull, daggers, snakes, syringes correspond to male tattoos and look like imitations of them.

Secondly, in female tattoos, images of flowers, birds, playing cards, glasses, male and children's heads, drawings of cynical or frankly pornographic content predominate.

The inscriptions and drawings speak of the criminal's love and family ties, sometimes reaching an extreme degree of sentimentality such as "Baby, just wait for me and i'll be back". Women prefer to tattoo in places closed by clothing, which indicates that this is done consciously. Such a tattoo can only be seen by the closest people or in an intimate setting.

For such tattoos, the lower abdomen, thighs, waist, chest area, neck are usually used. An example of such tattoos can be a tattoo made to a young gypsy girl arrested for pocket theft. This "Carmen" added an image of a female face with tears flowing from it with the inscription: "I will not forgive betrayal!" She was obviously passionate and jealous.

In other cases, the image of a naked female figure is crossed by a syringe.

For greater clarity, the drawing is accompanied by the number of the article of the Criminal Code and the place where the owner of the tattoo thundered on the dock according to this article. Sometimes the tattoos of the inhabitants of women's zones resemble a kind of "live magazine".

For example, one of the prisoners carved a portrait image of her first man, date and place where she parted with virginity.

Another convict, sentenced to a long term of deprivation of liberty for murder, made a tattoo on her stomach - a "family photo" on which she was depicted with her beloved. Four letters were added to it: "OMUT". This had nothing to do with river factories. This was an abbreviation: "It's Hard To Leave Me". And, of course, very often female tattoos have a clearly expressed religious content.

On the shoulder of one of the prisoners you can see the image of a saint, the name of which the lawbreaker was given at baptism.

Sergey Shchukin.
Copies of tattoos were done by Dantsik Baldaev,
according to the newspaper "Behind the Grate" (No. 2 2011).