Go Big or Go Home

A few nights ago, I finished Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened* and so I found myself staring down the three books I’ve semi-recently accumulated that I have here in my dorm room: Fahrenheit 451, Coraline, and Kat von D’s Go Big or Go Home: Taking Risks in Life, Love, and Tattooing. 

After flipping through and reading a bit of both the Bradbury and the Gaiman, I decided to begin reading Kat’s latest.

I should say that I have had a complicated relationship with Kat von D over the last couple of years. Not relationship in that I know her in any way (although, I did technically meet her twice at book signings), but relationship as in how I have related to who she is–or at least, who I have perceived her to be.

I was once a huge Kat fan. I watched her show, LA Ink, religiously until it seemed to me to become less about the art of tattooing and more about what makes good reality TV (an oxymoron?), which is, of course, drama. I had not one but two posters of her up in my room at home (posters from Spencer’s, so she wasn’t exactly...fully-clothed. Let’s just say my aunt and grandmother loved seeing those when they peeked into my room). And I had gone to book signings for, read, and loved her two previous books, High Voltage Tattoo and The Tattoo Chronicles.

Well, I loved High Voltage Tattoo. At the time of The Tattoo Chronicles book signing is when I had become unrealistically disillusioned with Miss Drachenberg. There were some hard feelings from me toward her for embarrassing, tabloidistic** reasons that I’m ashamed to admit to. And those feelings held on for a while. I have been judging Kat for things I obviously know nothing about, as I am not a close personal friend of hers, and for being a type of person that I can never be sure she actually is.

All that aside though, I had decided to buy her latest book. I was apprehensive about reading it, worried it would leave me with even more of the animosity The Tattoo Chronicles had fueled. But now I am so glad I made the decision to purchase it.

I am currently only halfway through the pages, but I can tell that this is the type of book I will look back on in times when I will need it. Set up differently than her previous two books, the backbone of Go Big or Go Home is the seven thematic essays Kat has written over individuality, strength, creativity, independence, presence, wisdom, and altruism. The rest of the pages are then filled with the typical Von D book fare–tattoo stories. These profiles, however, share the common theme of being over large-scale tattoos, as those are the type that require the most risk-taking and biggest commitment (see: the book’s title).

In this book, Kat’s words reveal what a kind-hearted soul she truly is, beneath all the camera glare. And the photographs of the tattoos (and even the ones of Kat herself) show off the talent that has always been so obviously there.

The book is inspiring and feels important to me, like Kat herself did at one point in time. I’m enjoying getting reacquainted with why I loved her so much in the first place and leaving the bad attitude I had acquired toward her behind. 

*You’ve heard it from Maggie. You’ve heard it from Amy. You’ve heard it from Mayte. But really: read that book.

**A word I’m pretty sure I just made up, meaning “of the caliber you might find in a tabloid.” In other words: overdramatic, probably misinterpreted, often trashy, and really none of my business. Feel free to use it.