Lonni Pike, a social media influencer from California, has gone viral on TikTok after difficult the stereotypes positioned on ladies of their fifties.
Pike, 57, makes use of the deal with @grayhairandtattoos on TikTok and YouTube, the place she makes videos encouraging ladies to embrace their particular person fashion no matter society’s expectations.
In certainly one of her first TikTok movies, posted in November 2020, Pike stated that being 56 is “not what you think it looks like, cause it looks like this.” The 15-second clip has over 4 million views as of Thursday.
In Might 2022, she reached 1 million followers on the platform.
Chatting with Insider, Pike stated she began making movies to problem “the tattoo age hole” that’s positioned upon ladies.
“I hear ladies, particularly of their forties, folks telling them, ‘You are too outdated.’ They usually’re like, ‘We prefer to put on band T-shirts. We have now tattoos. Individuals are telling us we’re going by a midlife disaster,” Pike stated. “And I am mainly simply telling them that it doesn’t matter what you are listening to, it doesn’t matter what society is telling you, it is okay so that you can be you.”
“That is similar to the entire tattoo age hole, as a result of once you’re youthful, you might be advised that your tattoos aren’t gonna look good once you’re older. And once you’re older, you are advised that you just’re too outdated to have tattoos. There’s by no means a superb time to have a tattoo, based on society,” she added.
Pike additionally encourages ladies to embrace their very own vogue sense, no matter what society decides is suitable for his or her age. In a single TikTok video posted on June 27 that presently has over 840,000 views, she may be seen sporting a pair of ripped denims, a strappy white prime, and sun shades. She captioned the video: “Put on what you need at any age!”
Pike acquired her first tattoo 27 years in the past
Pike advised Insider that she acquired her first tattoo — barbered wire round her ankle — after separating from her husband when she was 30.
“For me, it represented how I felt trapped the place I used to be as a result of barbed wire both retains folks in or retains folks out,” she stated. “And that was the duality of why I acquired that… I wished to keep in mind that I by no means wished to really feel that approach once more.”
Lonni Pike.
She stated she now has an estimated 25 or 30 tattoos, together with ink behind her ear, on her decrease abdomen, her again, each sleeves, and calves.
“Folks’s notion of tattoos is so completely different from what it truly is,” Pike stated. “Folks have of their minds, this ideology of like, folks with tattoos are uneducated or they’re criminals, or, you recognize, you haven’t any concept how many individuals assume I’ve a Harley Davidson and I am in a biker gang. I am virtually 58 years outdated — I am unable to even journey a bicycle.”
“It has been such an unimaginable honor to have the ability to be in entrance of like your complete world and be like, ‘No, you bought that mistaken.'” she stated.
” what? We’re mothers, we’re grandmas, we’re college students. We’re ladies. We’re who we’re, and we’re simply time stamping ourselves to recollect who we’re,” she added.
