Tattoo/Body Modification Emoji?

Last year, the Creative Director at Painful Pleasures and I were having an interesting conversation as we were talking about new icons for REV23. We determined there is no standard symbol for tattoos, body piercings or just body modification in general.

We then got into talking about the Iconspeak Traveler T-shirt. Using this shirt, you can theoretically speak to anyone without a language barrier by simply pointing to one or more of the icons on your shirt.

How would tattooing and body piercing be represented in Iconspeak, or even Emoji? Do you go super cliché with a "Mom Heart"? A smiley yellow face with a nostril piercing? What about body modification as a whole? I would say the majority of people who've never been tattooed or pierced would be unsure of what a tattoo machine or piercing needle look like.

As a technology leader in the industry, we think we should help design and propose such a standard! Perhaps it gets picked up by Unicode TR #51 (Emoji)! So what do you think? How do you think these concepts should be represented in an icon language such as Emoji? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Maybe we’ll start to put some of them together to see what they’d look like!