Weddingbee Blog

The movie “The Secret Life of Bees” based on the Sue Monk Kidd novel is now out in theaters, and so we thought we’d do a fun little feature this week where some of the bees share some fun and quirky “secrets” about themselves.

I’ll kick the series off with a huge secret of mine that Mr. Penguin doesn’t even know. But now that we’re married, I figured that it’s about time he knew! Okay, I still pray he doesn’t read this.

As some of you may already know, I grew up a die-hard Spice Girls fan, and my love for the Fab 5 has not waned in the slightest over the years. I recently got to see them in concert in Las Vegas on their reunion tour!

When I was 19, I went so far as to get a “Girl Power” tattoo on the small of my back (a tramp stamp, if you will).

Or, so I thought.

I took Japanese for 3 years in high school, and thought I had the basics of the language down pretty well. When we were freshmen in college, my friend Starla and I decided that for our first birthdays living away from our parents, we’d get tattoos. Naturally, we wanted to get tattoos that reflected our personalities; she got a star, and I wanted to get a tattoo just like Sporty Spice that read “woman strength” or “girl power” in Japanese.

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We sauntered into a not-so-carefully chosen tattoo parlor on Sunset Blvd. in LA, at the ripe age of 19, and I handed the artist my handwritten interpretation of “Girl Power”:

Or, so I thought. Because a wrong flick of the hook on the “Power” character (the bottom character), I accidentally gave the artist this instead:

And the bottom set of characters were what I got. Not “Girl Power” but instead, “Girl Nine”. Number 9. Numero Nueve.

Do I regret my “Girl Power” tattoo? No. “Girl 9″? Okay, yes, of course I regret that. I often consider getting another tattoo to cover it, but I still want it to read or incorporate “Girl Power” in some way.

So, you may often see those cliche Kanji tattoos on people, and wonder how many people out there have tattoos that say something utterly ridiculous and they don’t even know it. Well I’ve got one, and I happen to know it. I’ve kept it a good secret thus far, and have done a careful job of not bending over in front of Japanese people while wearing low riders.

Share your stories of shameful tattoo blunders (yours, or others) in the comments!