THE NIPPLE ARTIST | THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Wanted to share this interesting story I came across a few weeks ago about an amazing artist of another kind.

Vinnie Myers
This is truly a unique and inspirational story coming out of Finksburg, Maryland of a tattoo artist turned breast cancer savior. Little Vinnie’s Tattoos do the usual tattoo designs ranging from swordfish and skulls to complex Japanese-style art. But women with breast cancer who come to visit him, from far away as India,come to him for one reason and one reason only – to get a three-dimensional nipple tattoo by the owner, Vinnie Myers.

As women with breast cancer know all too well, finding out you have breast cancer and then losing a breast to it, can leave them feeling alone, devastated and feeling ‘ugly’.

Usually after a woman undergoes a mastectomy and breast reconstruction, the new breast is like a blank canvas since the sensitive skin of the nipple and areola is often removed entirely. The operation can recreate the size and shape of the patient’s natural breast by using her own body tissue or implants, but it cannot recreate a nipple. And doctors who do do tattoos of nipples are not tattoo artists to begin with and should leave that to the professionals.

As word spread of his skills, Myers became so inundated with clients that he had little time for his ‘regular’ tattoos. He said that in 2010 he decided to stop doing nipple tattoos. Then something happened:

“The morning that I planned on telling the guys to stop taking appointments for them, my sister called to tell me she had breast cancer,” Myers recalled.

He took it as a sign and has been doing it ever since.



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