For Tefi Pessoa, Tattoos Are a Form of Rebellion
The internet personality proves that vulnerability, self-awareness and a sense of humour are a perfect recipe for TikTok fame — and for a great collection of tattoos.
“I don’t want to be somebody who doesn’t have an opinion. I feel like being opinionated is a lost art these days; people are either quiet or they have the worst f*cking opinion ever,” laughs Tefi Pessoa. “Being a professional yapper can be tough.” Though if you’ve ever watched her TikToks, you’ll know that she makes it seem effortless.
The content creator, internet personality and pop-culture critic boasts two million followers across TikTok and Instagram and has become known for her unique brand of humour meets honesty meets thorough celebrity deep dives. Today, Pessoa is calling from her New York City apartment to tell me all about her 22 tattoos. It seems like an easy enough task, but I soon learn that it’s nearly impossible to get through a minute of conversation with Pessoa without cracking up at her impossibly quick wit. Indeed, if there’s anyone who could make the topic of tattoos worthy of a stand-up special, it’s her.
“Growing up, I felt very split between two different worlds,” says Pessoa. “I’m first-generation American. My mom is Colombian, and my dad is Brazilian. So aesthetically I was like, ‘Do I want to look like Sofia Vergara or Paris Hilton?’” she jokes. “And Gwen Stefani was a huge influence on me, too. She was a sensitive rock ’n’ roller, which is what I’ve always wanted to be.” Pessoa is a proud Cancer (the zodiac’s most sensitive sign) and even has a tattoo of the archangel Gabriel, Cancer’s angel representative. “Shakira released this cassette tape in 1995 called Pies Descalzos, which means ‘bare feet’ in Spanish, and it became my religion,” says Pessoa. “It’s a devotion to heartbreak that’s almost spiritual. It’s so heart-wrenching, and I remember being like, ‘This is the life I want,’” she laughs. “I think I was seven years old.”
Pessoa took her obsession (her words!) with connecting with people and turned it into a career with her popular YouTube show, Tefi, in 2019. Shortly after, the pandemic brought it to a halt, and Pessoa moved to a new platform, TikTok. Today, she has 1.8 million followers who are hungry for her takes on celebrity culture.
“In my first pop-culture video, I did a 2005 rewind where I talked about Kanye West and Mike Myers’s Hurricane Katrina moment, Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch and other stuff that happened that year. And somebody commented, ‘Tefi, is it true that Brad Pitt was married to someone before Angelina Jolie?’ I said, ‘Open the schools!’ I couldn’t believe it.” From there, Pessoa made it her mission to open her “school” and bring pop-culture history to TikTok. “My account kept growing and growing — then I could afford more tattoos,” says Pessoa. Right…back to those.
“My first tattoo was the number 22 behind my ear,” says Pessoa. It’s for her birthday, July 22. Most of her other tattoos from her early days in experimenting with the art form are now covered. “What was I trying to prove?” she says, and I can practically hear her rolling her eyes.
When prompted for an example of one of the tattoos she has now covered up, Pessoa doesn’t miss a beat. “I used to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s with my grandfather. He loved Audrey Hepburn. I think that’s who he wanted me to be. Meanwhile, I was absorbing as much Shakira as possible,” she laughs. “Anyway, at one point, Holly, played by Hepburn, tells Paul, played by George Peppard, that he should never love a wild thing, and I got that quote tattooed on my wrist,” she says. “There is nothing more humbling than being in a nightclub and a guy saying ‘Cool tattoo; what does it mean?’ and having to yell over the music ‘Oh, well, me and my grandfather…’” laughs Pessoa. “Now I have a barking dog covering it.”
Recently, Pessoa got a tattoo on her lower back — a placement that was popular in the early 2000s — as a way to reclaim a difficult era for her. “Y2K was such a toxic time for me,” says Pessoa, who has been outspoken about her past with disordered eating and how celebrity culture in the 2000s played a role in that obsession with thinness. “I got that tattoo for the angsty teen in me.”
She also has the Virgin Mary tattooed on her arm. “I just feel like you can’t be Catholic and not be a little rock ’n’ roll,” she jokes. Also, my mom always tells me to pray to the Virgin Mary because ‘she’s a mom so she gets it.’”
Jokes aside, Pessoa says that her tattoos have always been a form of rebellion. “I felt a lot of resentment toward the societal expectations placed around girls in the Latin community,” she says. “People who aren’t Latin think of these stereotypes about all the women being passionate and ‘spicy,’ as some say—which, by the way, I don’t like. But within the Latin community, the expectation for girls was different. You were supposed to be a nice, sweet girl who marries well and becomes a lawyer or a doctor. And I really resented that people inflicted this narrow idea of femininity upon me.”
“I just wasn’t those things,” she continues. “I wanted to shake my ass, I wanted to kiss boys and I wanted to show my navel. I would watch Coyote Ugly and be like, ‘That’s literally me, bitch!’ So I started getting tattoos. I became obsessed with being hyper feminine and girlie while having, you know, a tattoo of a ballerina riding a gator.”
This article first appeared in FASHION’s October 2024 issue. Find out more here.
