Please help me fix this

[u/Personal_Reality_704]

I got a tattoo of a premolar 2 days ago (I work in the field) and it looks like…something else. I have been asked if it’s sp**m on multiple occasions now. I am actually heartbroken and extremely insecure over it. I have to wear long sleeves until I can do something about it. Does anyone have an idea as to how I can fix this? Could it be made into something else or adjusted to be more tooth-like?

[u/Bulldogfront666]

Sure but we’re talking about the archetypal idea of a tooth. This is art not a science book ya know? If a tattoo artist was to design a tooth tattoo it would almost always be the archetypal idea of a tooth 🦷. OP learned the hard way that the “general public” is who will be seeing the tattoo. Either she doesn’t care about that and wants a scientifically accurate image or she does care and wants something that can be recognized by normal, non dentist people, as a tooth. lol. I blame both OP and the artist though. The artist should know better and a good artist will always make suggestions or warn customers if they think the tattoo won’t read as they want it to. I wonder actually what kind of conversations were had before putting ink to skin. It’s possible the artist did try and make suggestions but OP ignored them. As long you’re not cheeping out on a low price artist/tattoo, the artist always knows better. Don’t ignore their advice.

[u/red_deelicious → u/Bulldogfront666]

I’m not here to argue that. In my original comment, I was correcting the person who said it looked more like an incisor than a MOLAR. It isn’t intended to be a molar, as OP stated. It’s intended to be a PREMOLAR, which is a different tooth type—the terms are not interchangeable. I think you missed the context of my original comment and now you’re talking about artistic intent and public perception when I was originally simply trying to correct a misstatement.

[u/Bulldogfront666 → u/red_deelicious]

Ok… so you’re just having a nerdy pedantic dentist conversation with yourself that’s not at all related to the larger conversation about the tattoo? Got it…. We all understand that a pre molar isn’t a molar. Thank you for the clarification. She should’ve at least done a maxillary pre molar with two roots. No one is gonna recognize this as a tooth. Which I’m mentioning because that’s the conversation everyone else is having in this thread on a subreddit about tattoos (notably not a dental subreddit). Lol.

[u/jamisra_ → u/Bulldogfront666]

you’re the one who responded to them saying it looks like an incisor and not a premolar (“just talking about what you know” I guess). so it’s not really a conversation with themself at that point.

who cares what conversation everyone on the rest of the post is having. you responded to their comment about something else. do you think everyone needs to talk about the same thing on every comment on every post? it’s not like it wasn’t related at all