By Kaycee Jones
Baltimore Watchdog Contributor
Baltimore native Vinnie Myers was completing a tour in South Korea as a medic in the United States Army when he developed a successful gig tattooing servicemen for a few extra dollars.
Back home in Baltimore in 1991, he invested $5,000 of his wedding money to set up Little Vinnies Tattoos in Finksburg, Maryland, where he soon gained an international reputation for his detailed artistic designs. Today that tattooing talent has spun off into a unique niche: 3D Nipple and Areola Tattooing for women who have lost or damaged their nipples due to mastectomies.
“I tattoo from 1,500 to 2,000 a year,” says Myers at the studio he shares with three other nipple artists, including his 23-year-old daughter, Anna Myers. While most patients come from the Baltimore area, many jet in from around the world to get their “Vinnies,” as the tattooed nipples are known. The business, which has grown up by the old tattoo parlor, is popular and lucrative; Myers charges$600 per nipple, $800 for two, and does as many as five a day. His team of three tattoo artists tends to the overflow.
With the increasing rate of breast cancer and surgery, more women are opting for breast reconstruction. “What they don’t know is that you lose your nipple,” in that surgery, says Tasha Evans, one of Myers’ tattoo artists. “You can do nipple-sparing but it doesn’t always work.” Some physicians’ assistants have done coloring in the doctor’s office, but the color fades and the results are inferior to what the tattoo artists can do in just one hour, says Evans.
Known as the “Michelangelo of nipple tattoos,” Vinnie Myers travels from Finksburg to New Orleans, San Diego to Boston, for the procedures, rendering reconstructed breasts so real-looking that they have fooled nurses and doctors. Client Michele Cottleman calls him a genius. He uses an artistic effect to create the optical illusion of three dimensions, even though the tip of the reconstructed breast viewed from the side is flat.
For most women, visits with a member of the Little Vinnie’s team is the last destination of their breast cancer treatment. Doctors send their patients to see Myers and his team following breast and/or nipple reconstruction surgeries. “Luckily, I get to be the very last step of this entire journey so for the most part my job is rewarding not stressful,” Myers noted.
He first sketches the design on the patient’s breast with a pink sharpie, and then mixes up a variety of shades and pigments to match the individual skin tones. He then applies the color with the tattoo machine.
In 2010, Myers considered giving up the nipple tattooing practice until he received a heart-wrenching call from his sister Laurie who lives in the Baltimore area. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer the same day that he had planned to tell his team that he was quitting his practice. He took his sister’s diagnosis as a sign to continue to help the increasing numbers of breast cancer victims undergoing surgery.
According to breastcancer.org, an estimated 266,120 women were expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018. That translates to one woman out of eight. Of those 252,710 women, 40,920 are expected to die in 2018 alone. Myers says that the number of women who need his service provides him with enough motivation to keep on doing what he is doing.
Receiving a pair of “Vinnie’s,” gives these women who have gone through so much, the opportunity to feel complete again, says Michelle Cottle, a breast cancer survivor and a patient of Myers, based in Washington.
Cottle was not surprised by her diagnosis. Her mother had been diagnosed in the prior year, and she had ominous signs earlier. With an early diagnosis, she received a bilateral mastectomy, meaning that she lost both of her breasts, and an excellent prognosis. For many women, a breast cancer diagnosis comes as a shock. According to breastcancer.org, only 5-10 per cent of breast cancer fighters have the hereditary gene from a family member. For 85 percent of women, there is no sign of breast cancer in their family trees.
Both Cottle’s plastic surgeon and breast surgeon recommended Myers for the final job. Cottle explained that the experience was not like the tattoo experience that might be expected from the image of Vinnie’s parlor in a strip mall in rural Maryland. “It’s not the same as getting tattoo’s in your 20’s and Vinnie made sure the experience reflected that,” she said. The two rooms where the tattoos are performed are “girlified,” embellished with pink, and decorated in plants and family photos.
Cottle, a 42-year-old political writer for Atlantic magazine, described the results as “fantastic.”
“My breasts are now the youngest looking part of my body,” she said.
According to Anna Myers, the most difficult aspect of the business is tattooing a woman who is unhappy with the results of her reconstruction surgeries. “After everything they have been through they are still left with scars and sometimes reconstructive results that remind them every day of their struggles,” says Myers. “That is probably the most difficult part.”
Regardless of the imperfections, the nipple tattoo, completed by Myers’ team draws attention away from scarring and radiation marks, allowing women to feel confident again. Vinnie Meyers says he is inspired to continue his work by “the need to produce quality results and to help breast cancer survivors get close to feeling whole again.”
The father-daughter duo have no plans for retirement. Anna Myers, who studied art at Towson University, has been an apprentice in his studio for two years. “We have gotten pretty good at knowing when to treat one another like a colleague and when to treat one another like a family member,” Myers said about her relationship with her father.
The business is flourishing as breast cancer continues to take its toll. “Seeing how many people need this service is motivation enough,” says Vinnie Myers. “There are an endless amount of women who are dealing with breast cancer. And we are here to help women who have been through so much. . . You want to make them feel good as they possibly can.”