Tatted Up the Quaker Way

Darío Lizancos-Robles
has his first name tattooed on his
forearm in swirly letters.
The IB Spanish professor
faces no shortage of comments from

his students, poking well-inten-
tioned fun at the curious reasons

behind his artistic choice. One WFS
student remarks that “Darío must
have chosen to tattoo his name on
his arm in case he forgets it”. Gabe
Fletcher ‘25 jokes, “Maybe he didn’t
know what to put there, so he went
with his name.”
Despite an onset of
light-hearted teasing, Darío has not
shied away from allowing his tattoos
to be seen by students. After all, he

was our age when he received his
first tattoo at the pinnacle of early
adulthood.
Darío says, “I have three
[tattoos]. The first I got was my
name on my arm when I was 18.”
The tattoo Lizancos-Robles speaks
of is the student-renowned forearm
tattoo, featuring his first name in a
large, cursive-esque font. The reason
behind tattooing his own name on
his arm? A resolution to an identity
crisis.
“Fue un momento de
reconectar con mi
identidad,”
says Lizancos-Robles. “I had an
identity crisis, where I didn’t like

my name. Thanks to my mom, who
explained to me the origins of my
name, and why she named me that,
and I came to like it a lot. And so, I
tattooed it on my arm.”
Daríos second and third
tattoos also portray an expression of
his identity. His second (and most
painful) tattoo was a group tattoo
decided on by a circle of tight-knit
friends. It features the landscape of
his home city in Granada, Spain.
“We tattooed our city together in
2016,” says Lizancos-Robles. The
third is of his dog, Willie, a “super
chill greyhound”.
Despite being ridiculed as

a young adult, Lizancos-Robles be-
lieves that the stigma around having

tattoos is changing.

“When I got my first tattoo, people
told me, ‘you’re never going to find work’.
But this was many years ago… Depending

on the job, there’s more freedom,” says Liz-
ancos-Robles. “After a year in this job, once

people get to know you as a person, I think
it’s possible to teach [about your tattoos].”
Although remnants of bias against
tattoos continue to pervade the workplace,
recent research depicts a trend downward
from workplace opportunities hindered by

tattoos. A 2018 study conducted by the Uni-
versity of Miami

concluded that
out of the 2,000
individuals that
participated, those
with tattoos were

just as likely to re-
ceive employment

as those without.
However,
some with tattoos
still opt to keep
them on the low, at
least until getting to know a group better. “I
know that if I were to interview for a job, I
wouldn’t wear my arms completely covered

with tattoos. Mira mira, tengo tatuajes, con-
tratame. No es asi,” says Darío.

Lizancos-Robles shares that his
hesitancy to speak openly about his tattoos
to the WFS community partially stems from
the running joke about his famous self-titled
tattoo. “Tampoco me gusta hablar tanto de
ello, porque todo el mundo dice una broma.”
Lizancos-Robles then says mockingly, “‘It’s
so you don’t forget, or because you don’t
know your name’…so I don’t tell everybody
about it.”
Similarly to Darío, Brandon Jones
‘25 received his tattoo in a ‘coming-of-age’
transition to early adulthood. After nearly
two years of patient yet restless waiting, he

scheduled his tattoo appointment the morn-
ing of his 18th birthday. “I got a piece for my

grandfather on my arm. It has his name, and
the dates that he was born and passed away,”
says Jones. “There’s some clouds…I guess
you could say the clouds are a symbol for the
afterlife.”
Despite initial nerves about the
pain of getting a tattoo, Jones was quickly
overcome with awe during the ink process.
He recalls the experience of watching his
ideas fully come alive as “incredible”, and “so
cool”.

“When I got it, it
was a milestone. I

guess I was think-
ing, ‘Man I’m

actually 18, I’m
an adult’…It’s a
bittersweet thing,”
says Jones. “It’s
like, I’m 18! But

also, my child-
hood is coming

to an end. It’s a good
thing, but it’s scary as

well.”

To Jones, finding the perfect bal-
ance between embracing childhood while

accepting responsibility is key, particularly

in the process of getting tattoos, where deci-
sions create permanent markings. Jones says,

“The world would not go around if people
were Squidwards all the time. You need
some Spongebobs in your life.”
However, Jones also offers some
candid advice on the experience of getting
inked up. “Make sure that you KNOW you
want to get a tattoo,” says Jones. “I would say

for younger people, make sure you under-
stand the consequences, and the stigma of

having tattoos in the work world, and the
world in general. People may judge you. You
need to understand the maturity a tattoo
holds.”