Harriet Richardson Tattoo: Why This Comedian Inked 15 Men’s Mums On Her Ribs Instead Of Their Names

Most people who want to remember their past relationships keep a note on their phone, a group chat with mates, or just a fuzzy memory they’d rather not revisit. Harriet Richardson went a very different route. The comedian and performance artist has permanently inked a 22cm column of names down her ribcage — but not the names of the men she’s slept with. The names of their mothers. The Harriet Richardson tattoo has since sparked exactly the kind of conversation she says she was hoping for.

What Is The Harriet Richardson Tattoo, Exactly?

Richardson, who’s from Manchester, has tattooed 15 women’s names in chronological order, each one belonging to the mother of a former partner. The piece sits between her ribs, a spot she chose deliberately, saying it matched the intimacy of what the work is actually about. Some names came straight from memory or old diary entries; a couple of others she had to track down with the help of a private investigator after they’d slipped her mind entirely.

It’s part of an ongoing project called “Temporary,” which she started in 2025 and has no plans to finish. Every time she adds a new partner to her life, in theory, a new name eventually gets added to her skin.

Why Their Mums And Not Them

This is the part of the Harriet Richardson tattoo story that tends to stop people mid-scroll. She’s said outright that she deeply didn’t want the men’s own names anywhere near her body — but had no problem honouring the women who raised them. In her telling, she often felt more connected to these mothers than to the men she was actually dating, describing a kind of shared, unspoken understanding between two women who’d both had to navigate the same person’s behaviour, just from different sides of his life.

She’s framed the overlap between “girlfriend” and “mother” as one of the more interesting threads running through her relationships, and “Temporary” as her way of putting that overlap into something permanent.

The Meaning Behind ‘Temporary’

Richardson has been clear that the piece isn’t about getting even with anyone. As she put it in a Substack post explaining the project, “it isn’t about revenge; it’s about memory, responsibility, and consequence.” Her argument is that placing a name most men consider sacred — their mother’s — onto a body they’d otherwise treat as disposable disrupts a divide she thinks a lot of men quietly draw between the women who matter long-term and the ones who don’t.

There’s also a practical layer to the Harriet Richardson tattoo: permanence. A relationship can end, a phone number can get deleted, a person can simply stop replying. Skin doesn’t work that way. By her own account, the project is partly a refusal to let those experiences get quietly erased just because the man involved would rather they hadn’t happened.

How The Men Have Reacted (Or Haven’t)

Here’s the twist — despite inspiring what she’s called her “most sacred possession,” none of the men involved have actually said anything to her about it. Richardson chalks this up to a pattern she’s noticed in who she tends to date, joking that avoidant men are, unsurprisingly, unlikely to ever bring it up. She never gave any of them a heads-up before getting the work done, and says she’s genuinely fine either way — whether one of them eventually stumbles across it while checking her page, or never does at all. According to her, that uncertainty is part of the piece, not a flaw in it.

The Public Reaction To The Harriet Richardson Tattoo

Richardson has been upfront that she knew exactly how provocative this would look once it hit headlines, and that the reaction — strong opinions in every direction — was very much the point. Good art, in her view, is supposed to get under people’s skin (pun very much intended), and this one has clearly done that. You can read her full explanation in her original Substack post, and she went into even more detail about the project in a separate interview with Metro. She’s also been documenting the ongoing project on her Instagram, where the tattoo itself first surfaced publicly.

Whatever your take on it, the Harriet Richardson tattoo has done what most viral stories fail to do — it’s made people actually stop and think about memory, accountability, and what we choose to carry with us, literally or otherwise, long after a relationship ends.