14 DAY TRIAL // Cathy Ward, a huge “Twilight” fan from the UK, first made international headlines when, at 49, she got the entire “New Moon” poster inked on her back. Today, at 52, Cathy is almost covered in tattoos and she says she won’t stop until she has a full “Twilight” bodysuit.
For Cathy, her body art is more than just a collection of tattoos dedicated to her favorite novels and film franchise: it’s a reminder “of how far she’s come,” albeit it’s a very expensive one.
When she got her first “Twilight” tattoo in 2009, shortly after finishing the first book in Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling series, she was an unhappy size 24 but, today, she is healthy and very body-confident.
It’s true, she’s spent a fortune on her ink – £8,500 ($13,665 / €10,105) – so far, but she estimates she’ll spend about 4 times that amount by the time she’s done and she has her entire body covered in “Twilight” ink.
She’s not even factoring in the maintenance work in these calculations, and this probably says a lot about her dedication.
“I've had about 91 hours of tattooing now and it's costing a small fortune,” she tells the Daily Mail in an interview preceding her appearance on Channel 4’s “My Tattoo Addiction.”
“We've got the book covers, we've got the ribbon, we've got the family crest, we've got the hairpiece, we've got the chessboard from Breaking Dawn, we've got the wolf tribal symbol. I've had five wolves done and one of the last things Jacob says to [Bella] when he realizes he's lost her. He said: ‘It would be as easy as breathing with me’,” she continues.
With all this, she’s totally Team Edward and would not even dream of switching to Team Jake.
“I'm definitely a Robert Pattinson fan. It's because he's not classically good looking – he's different. I'm not what I'd call good looking, I'm average and he's similar. Plenty of other guys in the film are better looking but he's striking in different way,” she says.
As for how she credits her weight loss to her relatively new tattooing habit, she says getting inked gave her something to do instead of laying around on the couch all day, stuffing her face.
Not even the thought that she’ll be running out of skin one day scares her.
“The way I look at it, I've still got two to three years’ work to go and you need to do maintenance. There's always going to be things that need touching up or recoloring. I stand out, I don't care that I stand out. This is me, this is what I like, this is what does it for me. It keeps me feeling young,” she says.
Apparently, this feeling is even worth going broke for.