half of their customers are women. But not ail

half of their customers are women. But not ail women - want hearts and flowers. A girl in Milwaukee had the head of a panther etched on the back of her shoulder. “I don’t want fo be too. feminine,” she said. "I skate in roller derbies, and I want to scare the girls behind me.”

A Long Beach, Calif., housewife entered a tattoo studio and thrust a card into the tattooer’s hand, instructing him to emblazon the card’s message on her arm. "Death Before Dishwashing,” it said.

Tattoos have decorated the female body in other times. The preserved body of an Egyptian princess, buried in 2000 B.C., bore tattoos. And in a tattooing craze among British upper classes late in the 19th century, Lady Randolph Churchill sported a tattoo of a snake coiled around her wrist. Needlework Risky

Tattoos are made with indelible ink by electromagnetically powered needles that pierce the skin about one-hundredth of an, inch. Because of the risk of' contracting hepatitis from unsterilized needles, tattooing is illegal in some parts of the United States.

Although the process is somewhat painful, contemporary tattooing is a breeze compared with the more traditional techniques.

Many Indian tribes originally tattooed by. covering thread with soot and drawing it through the skin with a needle. In Tunisia and other parts of the world pigment is rubbed into knife slashes, and among the Pima Indians of Arizona the skin is pierced with thorns.

Whatever the method, getting a tattoo is usually simpler than getting rid of one. Most methods are painful, costly, and leave a scar.

"Sometimes a guy who has a girl’s name put on his arm will come back later and want me to cover it up,” Watkins the tattoo artist said. “I just tell him I’ll add the name of his current girlfriend and we’ll start a list.”