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These are not the face tattoos your mother warned you about — but maybe she should have.
Beauty chasers are suddenly shelling out hundreds of dollars for something called “semipermanent blush,” a new kind of cosmetic tattooing that’s become trendy in NYC — despite critics likening the finished product to “rosacea” or a “permanent sunburn.”
It’s the latest in a series of permanent makeup tattoos, following the boom of other cosmetic tattooing like eyebrow micro-blading, eyeliner tattooing and lip blushing, which are designed for low-maintenance beauty buffs.
For Grace Clarke, who likes to keep her daily routine simple, it felt like the perfect solution — never mind the hefty price tag.
“It’s total luxury, but the way I want to live my life on a day-to-day basis is spending as little time on vanity as possible,” the NYC-based brand consultant — who also cuts her own hair and DIYs her manicures — told The Post.
“It’s not that I don’t believe in vanity, it’s that I just don’t want to have to think about it, so I do lots of semi-permanent and permanent and invasive procedures to make that happen,” explained Clarke, who despises wearing makeup.
Instead, she does her own Russian manicures, cuts her own hair and has gotten plastic surgery all in an attempt to make her daily life low maintenance.
For her, the controversial cheek-blushing procedure was an “easy, simple solution.”
“I chose cheek blush because it feels like an indicator, at least aesthetically, of health and radiance, and aesthetically I find it really sweet,” she continued. “There’s something oddly sentimental to me about a rosy, fresh sort of vibrance.”
She visited Velvet Cosmetic Tattoos earlier this year after coming across the studio on TikTok. The owner, Savannah Messenger, has become, albeit “by luck and chance,” a pioneer for cheek blushing, as one of the first artists in the city to offer it.
“I had a couple clients actually ask me for it because they had seen it done in other countries,” Messenger, 34, told The Post. “So it’s actually pretty popular, from what I understand, in places like Korea.”
She had never heard of the tattooing method before her client, Tina Nguyen requested it. Before daring to try it on another person — let alone their face — Messenger practiced on the bottoms of her feet to perfect her technique.
She now offers the service — priced between $300 to $400, depending on the duration of the appointment — at her Williamsburg studio, but requires it to be booked only through a consultation, where she explains what cheek blushing is.
It’s imperative, Messenger added, for clients to understand the risks associated with cosmetic tattoos — lasers and retinol, for example, are off-limits — which tend to only last five years or less.
She also advised going to a reputable and trained artist. Any kind of tattooing — cosmetic or otherwise — can pose a risk of infection or less than desirable results if done incorrectly.
“If you mess it up, that’s it. It’s right there on somebody’s face,” Messenger said. “It’s not going to be easy to fix, if it is fixable.”
Cheek blushing typically involves softly “buffing” pigment into the top layers of the skin, she explained, comparing it to a “tinted microneedling treatment.” While it can look “crazy” in the days following, she noted, it heals to the desired result: a feathery, natural rouge.
“It’s not supposed to look like you have makeup on, it’s supposed to look like you’re just fresh,” Clarke explained.
Nguyen, a 23-year-old registered dietitian who is always looking for “long-lasting beauty solutions,” was Messenger’s first cheek-blushing client and, two years later, her semipermanent blush still provides a visible flush.
While she opted for a more vibrant hue of blush for her face, Clarke preferred a hue that made it look like she “had just come from a run,” although online haters compared it to “rosacea” or a rash.
“Now you have permanent sunburn,” one person snarked in her TikTok comments.
“It looks like rosacea,” quipped another, saying they “cover” their skin condition every day. “Will you tattoo eyebags or dark circles next?!”
Dermatologist Dr. Muneeb Shah, who practices in New York, told The Post that cosmetic tattoos like cheek tints tend to “last longer than most people think.” Then, it can “migrate” — the once-crisp lines can blur, just like the hair-like strokes from microblading brows that can blend together over time.
“So this would be true for like cheek blushing also, where it’s not going to necessarily look like it does when you first get it done as the tattoo evolves,” he explained, adding that the removal process becomes more “complicated” because of the healing process.
“Anything you do on the face is something that people are going to see every day,” he noted.
But not everyone was as harsh a critic — some, in fact, were inspired to research the service for themselves.
“I might consider this. Always wanted brows and liner, didn’t know blush was a thing,” wrote one TikTok user.
“As someone who looks like a dying Victorian child without blush: this looks great!” someone else chimed in.
The rouge is a far cry from the beauty trends of today, where bright, rosy cheeks a la pop star Sabrina Carpenter are in vogue.
“I think the popular makeup trends at the moment are always influencing everything that we do in permanent makeup,” Messenger said.
“But I do think that you have to kind of like create some limitations with that as well, because for me, I’m always thinking of longevity, like, how are you going to look in five years from now? We don’t want to look crazy.”
