An Arizona tattoo artist has come under fire for tattooing an American flag on a 9-year-old girl’s arm after she asked to get Trump’s portrait on her neck.
A video posted on social media by a tattoo artist at the Black Onyx Empire Tattoo parlor in Yuma, Arizona, has been getting a lot of attention online because it shows a nine-year-old girl getting her arm tattooed. Shared by the artist, who goes by ‘cutzsosa’ on Instagram, the video sparked a heated debate about inking minors, even with their parents’ consent. According to the artist the girl and her parents traveled to the tattoo parlor from out of state specifically to get a tattoo. She initially wanted a portrait of Donald Trump on her neck, but Sosa allegedly convinced her to get something more patriotic done, a US flag on her arm.
Sosa recently Mail Online that he tattooed the girl’s arm a year ago and told her to spend a year thinking if she really wanted to get it and if she did, he would consider doing it. The girl returned with her parents last month asking for a touch-up of the red on her American flag. She also changed her mind about the neck tattoo she originally requested.
Technically, all 50 US states have statutory laws banning minors from getting tattooed, but some states, like Arizona, have exceptions for children who get their parents’ approval for a tattoo. So Sosa didn’t do anything illegal, but some of his peers wonder if his decision was an ethical one.
“It is one of the most frustrating things about our career field and in Arizona where it has no regulations,” Ben Shaw with the Alliance of Professional Tattooists said. It can give us professionals a bad reputation. If you see a 10-year-old child with a professional tattoo and they say they got it at a tattoo shop, that degrades us as a whole.”
After photos of the 9-year-old getting tattooed went viral on social media, Sosa tried pushing back against his critics, claiming that the girl and her parents are from Turkey and they have a tradition of getting tattoos. Still, the tattoo artist admitted that his controversial decision to tattoo the young girl attracted a lot more criticism than he expected.
“It’s not like I tattoo 9-year-olds every day,” Sosa explained. “I don’t tattoo my kids. I’m not promoting kids to come and get tattoos.”
‘I’m getting a lot of hate from it. My employees are getting hate from it. My business, I’m getting so many bad reviews on Google,” the artist added.
