Creativity Quote by Nicole Appleton

Nicole Appleton’s line is designed to land like a dare: it flips the cultural hierarchy of pain. Birth is supposed to be the untouchable benchmark, the ordeal no other discomfort should be compared to. Tattoo pain, by contrast, is elective, stylized, even trendy. By claiming the “optional” hurt was worse than the “mythic” one, Appleton isn’t really ranking sensations so much as puncturing the script around motherhood.

The intent is partly comic, partly corrective. It reframes childbirth not as an all-consuming horror story but as something survivable, even manageable, especially in a world of epidurals and hospital protocols. The tattoo, meanwhile, becomes a concentrated, intimate endurance test: hours of needles, no anesthetic, no biological payoff, just you and the buzzing machine. That’s the subtext: control changes how we metabolize pain. Birth can be terrifying, but it’s culturally sanctioned and narratively “worth it.” A tattoo is self-authored, but it’s also self-inflicted, and that makes the sting feel sharper.

Context matters, too. As a pop musician, Appleton’s public body is part of her job; tattoos are both personal expression and public branding. Comparing ink to labor sneaks a serious point into a punchline: women’s pain is constantly curated, judged, and narrativized. The quote works because it refuses reverence. It turns motherhood from sacred territory into lived experience, delivered with the breezy candor of someone who knows exactly how tabloids and audiences will wince, laugh, and repeat it.