Sex-worker advocate’s erotic tattoos | Chicago ink
Hannah Talos-Roddam of the Sex Worker Outreach Project.
Hannah Talos-Roddam “I find sex interesting,” Talos-Roddam says, “but not as much in a salacious way. More in a science-nerd way.” In her Wicker Park apartment, the freelance event planner and Sex Workers Outreach Project organizer displays an eccentric collection: a plastic medical model of testicles she stole from a doctor’s office, a 100-year-old phallic bottle opener (“You hold the shaft and the balls pop the top”) and a plaster mold of an ex-boyfriend’s erection à la legendary local Cynthia Plaster Caster. A few years ago, after the National Archeology Museum of Naples began exhibiting a formerly banned collection of X-rated excavations from Pompeii, Talos-Roddam promptly flew to Italy to view the adult antiquities. “Frescos from the brothels—I mean, crazy shit,” she recalls. She also saw ancient Roman winged phallus amulets, which she incorporated into her first tattoo. Inspired in part by Green Porno, Isabella Rossellini’s book and short film series about the mating habits of animals, the 26-year-old recently started sitting for her second piece: a female praying mantis ripping the head off her mate during copulation. “It’s this sexual-cannibal love story,” she says, “and it’s just fascinating.”
Share with your network
Comment
It's okay to be a show-off.
With social reading, seamlessly share your favorite TOC articles, reviews and more with your Facebook friends, and check out what they're reading as well.
Share what you want, when you want: Once you've enabled social reading, easily enable/disable sharing anytime.
See what others are reading: With our new social activity feed, don't miss out on what your friends (and others) are reading.