This Tattoo Trend Is The Feminist Battle Cry We Need Right Now

Girl power: It's always represented being strong and showing it and might make you think of your primary school playground battle cry or your favourite Spice Girls song, but in 2017 it's amassed a whole new layer of meaning. Abbreviated as grl pwr, it's been reimagined into a sign of modern feminism and, better still, the latest way to show off the phrase is totally permanent. Enter: GRL PWR tats.

“I get a lot of women who come to get a tattoo and they don't want flowers or any girly shit, they want a permanent symbol of their girl power," Lalo Yunda, a tattoo artist based in Brooklyn tells Refinery29. "For the time in history where we are now, a lot of women feel like they are strong and successful, and they want to celebrate that."

What's more, the trend is attracting tattoo newbies. “I had seen the GRL PWR graphic on T-shirts and posters and found myself constantly doodling it on my notebooks and hands,” one woman with the tat told us. “I used to think: 'What could be so important that you had to have it written on your body forever?' Then [Donald Trump] was elected to the highest office in the country — then I knew I had to get the symbol somewhere on my body.”

Whether fuelled by politics or lingering (dated) social expectations of women — the trend is big, and only growing bigger, as people are sharing their body art on social media and inspiring women all around the world to join a forever-bonded, cool-girl gang. A few our our favourites, ahead.