Ryan Ashley is showing her Internalized Misogyny on Inkmaster Season 14

“I’m a lady tattooer and I tattoo like a lady”

Something I noticed over the past two episodes (and I’m streaming it on Paramount Plus) is that Ryan Ashley uses much stronger negative language when it comes to judging women. I hope to be proven wrong as the season progresses, but it seems like she is much more kind when judging the men’s work. I just did my master’s thesis which focuses on some of these dynamics. Here is my theory:

1. Ryan Ashley Malarky is the first and only female tattooer to win the title of Inkmaster. While she is incredibly talented, it was a pact between female tattoo artists which carried her to the end of the competition. The season was an all-out gender war. Ryan leveraged her femininity to stand out the entire time-even referring to herself as a “lady tattooer”. All the while, Chris Nuñez would say things like “if you wanna roll with the big boys…you gotta step it up” as he judged female tattooers. She set out to and proved that femininity in the male-dominated space was not synonymous with weakness. Wired went so far as to explain how Inkmaster was becoming a feminist show.

2. The spin-off show “Angels” was created from that alliance between badass women. “Angels” is a heavily female-gendered reference to the heroines of the 1970s TV show Charlie’s Angels but could also reference the iconic lingerie models of Victoria’s Secret- also called Angels.

3. Therefore she did not want to be perceived as a judge who may automatically favor, extend grace to or show preferential treatment to female contestants.

4. She wanted so badly to be seen as a judge who can look at the artwork subjectively to the point where she is overcompensating and flat-out making attacks.

5. She absolutely destroyed Holli when talking about her pinup- unnecessarily raising her voice and calling the pose a “f*cking cop out” because the hand is hidden behind the head. She called Katie a “one trick pony” even though all of Ryan Ashley’s tattoos look exactly the same. She begrudgingly gave Deanna good feedback early in the season but then tore her work down and made her cry. Again, raising her voice about how her color wasn’t packed into her Picasso tattoo. She is the only one to raise her voice and so far I’ve only seen her do it for women contestants.

6. Judges who are artists (as in NOT the musicians and celebrities like Dave) also usually have a mentorship component to their feedback. Yeah there are times when the feedback is not necessarily constructive, but fewer times when it’s downright harsh.

Women in authoritative positions who are harder on other women is not necessarily a sign of internalized misogyny. Sometimes it is because they had a hard road and believe that others should also have it hard. It is also a phenomenon that occurs when women achieve high positions in male-dominated environments- that by praising and uplifting men and not investing in mentoring other women, that they retain that power.

Marginalized people who succeed in white male dominated spaces also can feel slighted when someone else of the same marginalized background has the potential to outshine them or “take their spot”. This rivalry is often inflated or egged on by society. Ryan Ashley could very well feel threatened by up and coming female artist and feel a need to fight for her spot to not only be the first female, but the best in her mind.

Would like to see if anyone else has noticed Ryan Ashley’s behavior.