viz.

I take your point regarding a language that is potentially "secret"--I realize these things exist (twin-language, schmoopy talk, etc.). But I think what I'm trying to do is draw out the difference between private and secret. What I'm also trying to draw out is a claim that we need not posit this particular subject as getting this tattoo for the benefit of "intimate others" (sexual partners, doctors, and so on). In this case, couldn't we say that she is her own other (in fact, I wonder if there's some ethical sense in which we ought to see it this way, as something she does for herself, for her own benefit). And so, at the same time, it's as if the very positing of herself as a spectacle for her own gaze (in the mirror, as it were) dissolves the supposed distinction between public and private, because even when she's "alone," she is still "with herself"? Isn't there a sense in which even the "solitary" individual constitutes a public? (And hooray! for scare quotes!)