Leslie Forrester
LESLIE FORRESTER | 33 | LASER TATTOO REMOVAL EXPERT | GOLD COAST INTERVIEW BY SHAMUS TOOMEY
We're absolutely seeing more and more people come in. No question.
About 10 years ago, it seemed everybody had a tattoo. Now those people are entering their 30s or early 40s, and they realize they don't want them anymore.
Every tattoo has a story behind it of some sort. Whether it was a late night out drinking or a college thing. "I'm going to love you for the rest of my life. I'm going to tattoo your name across my chest." There's always some story. I usually ask.
I probably remove more dolphins than anything else. I see a ton of dolphins. On men and women, strangely. I don't know why. A lot of Florida spring breaks, probably.
Cost starts at about $150 a treatment on up. An average would be about five treatments. Once every four weeks. The skin needs time to heal in between.
At least 50 to 60 percent blame alcohol. Especially the ones who come in the next morning. I always ask them, "Isn't it illegal to get that done while you've been drinking?" They're not supposed to be doing that if they can tell you're under any kind of influence. But apparently they do anyway.
There's a police officer in the city who has "CARPE DEIM" really large on the inside of his arm. The I and E were flip-flopped.
We get a lot of people who come, young, usually with parents. Fifteen, 16, 17 years old. Their parents bring them in.
Pain is relative. There are ways to numb the area. We can give them numbing creams. We can do a little local injection to block it. We can use ice. There are ways around the discomfort of it.
I had 15-year-old girl who came in a couple months ago. Her mom went out of town. She went out and got a tattoo -- her boyfriend's name tattooed across the side of her neck. Her mother pulled her in by the ear to take that off.
Tons of upcoming brides. Oh my gosh. An unbelievable amount. An unbelievable amount of women who want them off. So many people, it doesn't fit with their dress, having a giant tattoo on their arm.
No, I don't have any tattoos. After 10 years in the business, I've learned from other people's mistakes on this one.
I would probably do some type of medical type symbol. Something like that. At my age now, I don't think I would venture into that. I'm past my 20s.
The strangest place? Well, that one's easy. There are a few where woman shave their, the front of their . . . and tattoo. Big tattoos there. Not something like a little rose. A big scene. Like a garden scene. Some sort of themed scene. I don't mind removing it. It doesn't make me embarrassed, being in the medical field for a while, but I think, "Wow, someone had to put this on you, ya' know?"
I try to just talk to them through the whole thing and keep their mind off of what's going on -- especially when it's areas like that.
I've never had a man come in with anything like that.
Women are much more adventurous with doing it on parts that are . . . I guess they must look at it like, "It's hidden, nobody is ever going to see that area." But someone eventually does. And it's usually me.
There's a huge misconception as to how laser tattoo removal actually works. It's not really the laser that removes it. It's your own body that removes the tattoo. The laser seeks out the dye and causes, in layman's terms, almost a disruption in skin. Your white blood cells actually take the dye and remove it. Laser facilitates that to actually happen. But the laser itself is not blasting out color.
Different lasers in tattoo removal work on different colors. There isn't one laser for every color tattoo, which is one of the biggest issues for tattoo removal. You cannot use the same laser on red that you can on black that you can on blue. So it has to be done properly in the first place.
Some colors are much more difficult than others. Any shade of blue is very hard. . . . A lot of times tattoo artists will use almost like a fluorescent dye when they mix in their blues, to make that blue really pop and be vibrant. There's a specific laser that removes blue, which very few places even have. It's an Alexandrite laser.
Scarring depends on the person's skin. It's unlikely. Using the right lasers, someone should have absolutely no problem. They should walk away, maybe with a faint shadow of the tattoo, possibly. Or nothing.
I don't understand why people get 'em. I guess that's my thing.
For people who come in, the overall response is: "I'll never do this again. I'll never get another tattoo. Ever."
No one tattoos their phone number, like "If lost, please return to." That would actually be a good one.
We get a lot of people that come in the day after they get them. They don't like this. They don't like that.
There was a young kid who got a huge cross tattooed on his back. His entire back. His parents refused to pay for him to go to college until he got it removed.
We get a lot of military who come in who can only have a certain portion of their arm exposed to tattooing, so they'll want just half the tattoo removed. And then, as soon as the enter the military and go through basic training, they'll get the tattoo put back on.
It's not usually overly intelligent artwork. I do see interesting quotes tattooed on people's arms. Scripture, or lines from a poem, or lyrics or something their grandfather or grandmother said.
One girl had something written on the inside of her arm. She was getting it off because she was so tired of having to tell people what it meant.
I think it's an incredible year to be alive. I think this is such an exciting presidential election. I think it's amazing.
The Democratic contest was a little bit long. I felt like maybe it could have been shortened. It would have saved some money. They raised all this money to campaign, millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars. If it was a little bit shorter, some of that money could have gone to something a little better. More beneficial. Take your pick nowadays.
I haven't seen a Barack Obama tattoo yet. Doesn't mean I won't.