‘I either harmed somebody, or I ended up with a bad experience’: tattoo artist’s viral confession is a wake-up call for the industry

A body piercer’s honest story about mistakes she made early in her career has started an important discussion about safety and training in the tattoo and piercing world. Her experience shows what can happen when young workers with little experience are forced to do complicated procedures on their own.

According to Bro Bible, body piercer Madam Mods recently opened up about something that happened when she was working at her family’s tattoo shop as a teenager. In a TikTok video that got more than 192,000 views, she talked about what went down when she was 16 or 17 years old. A customer walked in asking for a genital piercing, but her uncle who was supposed to train her wasn’t around. Even though she had never done that kind of piercing before, she had to handle it by herself.

When she thinks about those early days now, Madam Mods is clear about what went wrong because of bad training. “The few experiences that I’ve had with it where I just tried to trial and error my way through. I either harmed somebody, or I ended up with a bad experience,” she says in the video. These days, she tells other piercers they should always be honest with customers if they haven’t done something before. She calls it “a health and safety issue, more than it is about your ego.”

This was way more serious than just messing up

The big problem here is that this type of piercing comes with real dangers. Healthline points out that genital piercings can cause a lot of health problems that go beyond what you’d expect from regular piercings.

Things get even worse when you learn that many states don’t have rules about these piercings. Without proper rules, it’s hard to make sure piercing shops are actually keeping things clean and sterile. This isn’t the first time people have worried about the wrong products being used in beauty services, as a JCPenney client discovered when the wrong cleaning product was used on her face.

These piercings can take up to a whole year to heal for some people. The risks get even bigger for people who have diabetes, allergies, skin problems, or weak immune systems.

Today, Madam Mods, who is based in Indiana, uses her social media to push for changes in how the industry works. She tells piercers they need to tell customers the truth if it’s their first time doing something, and they shouldn’t charge money for it.

“If this is your first time doing any type of piercing. For the love of God, don’t charge those people,” she says in the video. Even though she knows how to do these piercings the right way now, she doesn’t do them anymore because she doesn’t have enough good experiences with them. The conversation about beauty service costs has gotten pretty wild lately, with some people even traveling to different continents for cheaper haircuts.

Most people who saw her video were supportive of her honesty. Fellow piercer Tally-Maree Eade wrote, “I really wanna say for folks who don’t understand how horrific and hostile some studio environments are, ESPECIALLY if you are AFAB or Queer and even MORE SO when you are a minor. I’ve been in the industry for ten years and have a list of horror stories and an even longer list of the horror stories my friends have.”

Someone else asked if what happened was even legal, writing, “I can’t believe this would be legal for a minor to do this. This had to be so uncomfortable. Did the owners ever get in trouble?”