The lasso tattoo is becoming a popular female ink option. Design, size, colors and placements are chosen to reflect a variety of personal meanings, depending on where they are inked. This style is being creatively styled to reflect meaning or placement on the body. Bows have been used culturally in many ways to visually express a feeling, meaning, or practicality. Bows often have a feminine flavor of representation, perhaps one of the reasons they are chosen for inking.
The traditional dictionary explanation is that a bow is formed using cloth or string, tied so that it has curved parts on each side with two loose ends. A classic visual example of this is looking at shoelaces after they’ve been tied. Bows have been worn by women as decoration and often to hold or tie their hair.
For the gift giver, a bow is often a way of embellishing the presentation and is used as a visual acknowledgment to the recipient that it is a gift. A now common visual symbol of a gift.
Bows have been used to represent as a reminder not to leave the past behind, as in the saying “Forget me knot”.
Yellow ribbons are often tied around trees with a large bow, to show a representation that family and friends are waiting for and honoring the return of a loved one, from travel, or from war.
They are sometimes used to symbolize an achievement in life and how it might be unleashed through circumstance and frailty.
In the fashion industry, bows have been used in many different styles, from head to toe. Some styles incorporate a physical bow and others have used a printed bow material. Classic men’s formal wear is often depicted with a bow tie.
Cartoon characters are sometimes depicted with the placement of a bow, to visually represent that the character is female.
Bow ribbons are often worn or displayed. A pink ribbon, for example, is known to symbolize or represent a fight against breast cancer. It can be a visual expression of support for family or friends in an emerging breast cancer. Or sadly they represent the loss of a family member or loved one to breast cancer.
Bow tattoo designs, from flashy to delicate, have been used on the body to represent jewelery on fingers and toes. At the back of the legs, where the old style garter pins would have been located, some women choose to have an inked bow. Others have chosen to have a ribbon that wraps around their ankle tied in an inked bow.
Feminine twists are being designed that incorporate a loop in the traditional skull, cross and bones and designs that were originally more masculine.
Perhaps the attraction of bow tattoos, for those who choose to tattoo them on their body, is the variety and versatility of the possible meanings that it could have or represent for them, with a feminine creative touch.