MY PERSONAL style is usually pretty girly — skirts, dresses, flower-print tops, and as always, high heels.

When I do feel like being adventurous I go with the ”boyfriend” look, throwing on jeans and a loose shirt or T-shirt, and sneakers. Because of that, people are sometimes surprised that I like rock music and say, ”Oh, but you don’t paint your nails black or wear spiked armbands!”

Your clothes are not you, they are a mere reflection of stuff you like, and sometimes, judgment based on physical first impressions can be quite wrong.

Everyone has their personal style, and what I admire most about certain people is their ability to stick to their own, no matter what others say about it or the stares they might get.

Last weekend I went to the opening of a store in Subang Jaya, Selangor. It’s a corner shoplot occupied by Lynda Chean and her boyfriend Sukeats Chee.

The shops are Wheel Love — a skate shop run by Sukeats, selling all kinds of skating merchandise from wheels to T-shirts; and Pink Tattoos, a tattoo parlour-cum-boutique.

Lynda, 24, shared that she is ”not as tattooed” as most tattoo artists, for the reason that she likes to choose her body art carefully.

That’s one thing I have never quite had the guts to get — a tattoo.

Have you ever had that feeling that as soon as you know someone has a tattoo, something about their image changes?

I do. It’s like they suddenly become edgier, more confident, ready to stare pain in the face without flinching — and all of a sudden you respect them more.

”My tattoo parlour isn’t your typical tattoo place,” said Lynda as she led me into an immaculate white space.

”I want to change the idea that tattoo parlours are dingy, dirty and run by scary-looking tattoed people.”

Lynda, who makes all the jewellery herself, designed her shop to look ”vintage”.

Her boutique sells handmade vintage inspired jewellery under the label Brollies.

”It just so happened that all the furniture I got from my parents’ house, my friends’ parents’ houses, were really old and antique looking. It really fits the whole theme of the store and the stuff I sell,” said Lynda. ”My mum and I sewed the colourful curtains ourselves.”

The former copywriter has a beautiful flower motif tattoed on her arm and sports a funky hairdo, long at the back and shaven at the sides, but not quite a mohawk.

She doesn’t do exact replicas of tattoos — if you come to her store and show her a design, she’ll personalise it for you so that none of the tattoos she does are exactly alike.

But the point of this story is that we should never judge a person by how he looks. Lynda may be a tattoo artist with a funky haircut but she also wears flowery dresses, high heels and is polite, pleasant, and even a little soft spoken.

See, people always presume you are what you wear. Just because someone is a funky dresser, we think they are quirky and strange.

And that because a girl has her long hair tied in a ponytail and wears glasses, she is nerdy.

It is the same way we react to tattoos — those of us who don’t have them take a step back when we meet someone (especially a girl) who has tattoos.

Probably what we need to learn is that although your outward appearance (clothes, makeup, accessories, body art) are an extension of your personality, they are certainly not every-thing you are about.