Dancer, 70, among seniors stepping into tattoos

A couple of years back, Goodgold inked a ladybug on a woman in her 80s.

"She gave me a hard time when I got my first one when I was 18," she said by phone from England. "It's just funny that now she decides she wants a tattoo. I definitely approve. It's really cool."

Maret apparently has that rebel streak too. She had it done after her husband tattoo power supply, Ron, died in December.

Apart from displays of grief, some look to tattoos to celebrate freedom. "Now that they're able to, they kind of go wild," Whittenberger said.

"I always wanted to do it, but my husband unfortunately was kind of against tattoos, and out of respect for him I didn't do it," she said of the tat that cost her $125.

The Plantation woman is one of a limited but adventurous cadre of golden-agers who aren't afraid to adorn themselves with colorful artwork.

She's strutted in full plumage across Vegas stages, high-kicked with the June Taylor Dancers on "The Jackie Gleason Show tattoo machine kits," toured with bandleader Mitch Miller. But Joan Maret felt something in life was still missing: a tattoo.

Maret got the urge to sport ink after her daughter, Melanie, got a tattoo when she went off to college. Melanie, now 39 and living in Britain with a husband and child, recalls it a bit differently.

Steve Whittenberger, who inked Maret's tap shoes, said she was hardly his oldest client. That would be an 86-year-old woman who wanted a heart with a banner across it emblazoned with her late husband's name.

"I tried to talk my grandparents into getting a tattoo," he said. "But they're Jewish and they're not supposed to be buried with tattoos."

"She said she always wanted one cheap tattoo power supply, but her husband didn't want her to get one and now he's passed away," the artist said. "I guess she was a little rebel."

She decided to remedy that lack this month. So she waltzed off to Rock-A-Billy Tattoo in Lauderhill, where she had a pair of red and black tap shoes inked on the inside of her right calf.

Maret just turned 70.

Stevie Moon, owner of a Wilton Manors tattoo parlor that bears his name, had a 72-year-old woman who wanted a butterfly on her back. "The occasion was the unfortunate passing of her grandson," Moon said. "He had a butterfly."

"I decided to indulge in a dream I always had," said Maret, who teaches tap dancing and choreography in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

"You get them occasionally tattoo needle, it is more acceptable now tattoo machine power supply," said Jeffrey Goodgold, owner of Guru Tattoo in West Palm Beach.