Kimberley Vlaeminck: Nearly but not quite, 56 tattoos remain despite misery.

Update: Will she regret it? A man has had his name tattooed on the face of a woman he only met 24 hours earlier.

3 years later and Kimberly Vlaeminck is dealing with the consequences of her actions and the aggravation that the scars of that day still remain….

A young Belgian girl is still feeling the disastrous effects of having one day gone out and tattooed up to 56 stars on her face, a decision she later regretted and sought to reverse. Except turning back time has proven harder than what the now 21 year old had envisaged….

dailymail.co.uk: “…..almost three years after the 21-year-old decided to go under the needle, the constellation shows little sign of fading.

In June 2009, Miss Vlaeminck lied to family and reporters that she had asked tattooist Rouslan Toumaniantz for just three stars near her eye.

As her regret sank in, she claimed he kept adding more and more after she fell asleep at the Tattoo Box in Coutrai, Belgium.

She promised to sue the tattooist for the cost of removal, claiming a language barrier meant the Flemish speaker had misunderstood when she gave instructions in French and English.

Are we to believe the young woman? Is this way of shifting the blame of her decision? What was she doing a the tattoo parlor otherwise? Did she only mean to have a few tattoos done that day, and could have the tattoo artist dared begin putting such tattoos on anyone’s face without checking as many times as possible, despite a language barrier, and especially whilst they were asleep? Or is this just the way things are done when one arrives at a tattoo parlor. Pass out from the trepidation of what one has signed up for?

But eventually the truth came out:

Miss Vlaeminck said she avoided going out in public because the tattoos made her feel like a ‘freak’.

But a week later she confessed to a Dutch TV station that she had been awake throughout and had indeed asked for the full 56 marks.

She said she lied because she was afraid of how her father would react.

It of course should not go without passing that the tattoo artist, Rouslan Toumaniantz  (who proudly boasts his own very colorful face) now asks for written consent before tending to his customers. Although he will be the first to admit that Miss Vlaeminck’s episode did bring him much needed publicity. Perhaps one could solace from Kimberley Vlaeminck’s situation that as much as welcome boldness and risk taking in one’s lifetime there may eventually come a time one may regret such choices. Or not….?

Anyone off to the tattoo parlor this afternoon???