Personal space

Yesterday a bizarre thing happened to me at work. I'm not sure if I should be horrified about this or whether I'm over-reacting. I'll tell the tale.

Yesterday it was quite warm here in Melbourne. Resisting the (obvious) temptation to wear hotpants, thongs and a singlet top (as were a lot of women I saw yesterday), I wore a t-shirt and skirt. The tshirt's sleeves were at an angle so about half the tattoo on my arm was visible. I sometimes get comments about the tattoo at work (from both staff and patrons) but mostly, it's ignored.

So I was helping a girl (who I had never seen before in my life) find some videos and I'd knelt down to show her the ones she wanted and she says "oh, that's a nice tattoo" and before I could do anything lifts up my shirt sleeve to get a better look!!! I was horrified! I don't know about her, but I usually don't want to go around touching complete strangers. I realise her move was probably well-intentioned (she just wanted to get a better look), but just because she can see the tattoo doesn't give her the right to invade my personal space.

I have other friends who are much more heavily tattooed than I am who have had random people come up to them in shopping centres and lift their shirts up to see what's underneath. So I know this does happen, but it's never happened to me before and I honestly didn't think it would, as this tattoo is fairly small and a fairly standard design. I honestly thought we'd gotten over the days of tattooed skin=public space but I guess not!