I’m trolled for my face tattoos — but it’s teaching my kids an important lesson
Carly Ejogbamu got her first tattoo six years ago and hasn’t looked back since (Picture: Carly Ejogbamu / SWNS) A mum with nine face tattoos says trolls say her children would be better off without her. Carly Ejogbamu, 39, got her first tattoo six years ago after the end of a previous relationship and instantly loved it.
She got her first face ink — a moon above her eyebrow — in 2020 and then bought her own tattoo gun and began her body art journey. She now has more than 120 tattoos, multiple piercings and lip fillers. After posting a selfie alongside her husband Aesop Ejogbamu, 40, Carly received thousands of comments calling her a ‘freak.’
Carly, from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, said: ‘I’m not a very technical person and didn’t realise my Facebook profile was set to public, so I just shared a selfie of me and my husband. The mother of four has faced intense backlash over her ink (Picture: Carly Ejogbamu / SWNS) Since buying her own tattoo gun, she has 120 pieces of body art and multiple piercings (Picture: Carly Ejogbamu / SWNS)
‘I came back to my phone 20 minutes later and there were thousands of comments calling me “it” and “a freak”. ‘There were comments saying how disgusting I am, how I’m mentally unwell, that my children need to be taken into care. ‘It’s all because I choose to look different.
‘I am thick skinned but if it was anybody else it could have really affected their mental health.’ Carly spent £300 on the tattoo gun kit instead of having a wedding party and inked tributes to her husband using it. She said: ‘We got married at the registry office and then came home and made dinner, it was such a normal day.
She has been inundated by trolls online (Picture: Facebook / SWNS) Carly admitted the comments initially knocked her confidence (Picture: Facebook / SWNS) She took a break from social media after receiving the hate (Picture: Facebook / SWNS) ‘Instead of having a big party, I bought the gun. I have an A and 224 on my face for husband. 224 signified “today, tomorrow, forever”, which is cheesy but I love it.’
After the first round of trolling, Carly said she took some time off social media. The stay-at-home mum told Talk to the Press: ‘The first time it happened, I was arguing back with them in the comments but that just made it worse. ‘It knocked my confidence a bit so I took a break and didn’t really post for a while but I started back about four months ago.
‘Now I use it. I started taking my selfies and captioning them just to trigger them. ‘I’ve just had a new piercing on my face, a bridge, and I’ve captioned the picture “growing old gracefully”.’ The stay-at-home mum has returned to social media to share her pictures (Picture: Carly Ejogbamu / SWNS)
Some trolls have even taken to using AI to come up with new ways to get at her. Carly said: ‘I get people who have AI’d my face with the prompt of “take all the piercings and tattoos away” and then tell me that’s how I should look. ‘It’s hilarious because even before the tattoo’s I didn’t look like that.’
The mum isn’t deterred by the comments as her husband and kids, aged one, three, eight and 14, love how she looks. She said: ‘My husband loves my tattoos, and now I have covered him with tattoos too. ‘He knows what I have been through before and how conservative I had to be, so now he just goes along with whatever I want which is a blessing.
She has said her husband and children love her tattoos and she wouldn’t have it any other way (Picture: Carly Ejogbamu / SWNS) ‘He is my biggest supporter and argues back with people in the comments but I leave him to do that. ‘My kids are the most respectful kids you’ve ever met, and I never get any complaints about them.
‘My daughter is 14 and is just starting to find her own style. She has a shaved head and puts patterns in it with hair dye. ‘She’s just finding herself, and it’s good for her to have a role model. ‘That’s sort of why I’ve been doing this to teach her that it’s okay to be who she wants.