August 04, 2008

Ink belongs on paper

People who know me well could tell you I've been dubious for quite some time now about society's acceptance of tattoos. There's a good article in the UK paper the Telegraph about the phenomenon:

Most tattoos are the cheap plumage of the attention-seeker, visual ice breakers for last-chance barflies and aspiring reality TV show contestants. They certainly aren't scary or alternative any more. Now that they have been co-opted by the masses - the squares, the mortgaged, the Volvo drivers, the wusses and the girls - we have come to accept their fairground aesthetic in much the same way we have decided to allow Gordon Ramsay's pointless swearing.

"If a client wanted to give up a City job to become a rock star, I would be supportive of them getting a tattoo," says Lisa Bathurst, an image consultant. "Generally, though, I think a devil's advocate approach might be better and I'd advise someone to think very carefully. A tattoo might look cool and sexy when you are in your twenties and thirties, but there comes a point when things start to fill out and stretch and then it might not look so good.

That's exactly why I've never wanted one. When I was growing up, we lived next door to an elderly man named Ed who got a tattoo of something or other on his forearm during World War II. I say "something or other" because it was a blurry, ugly mess after four decades. I resolved that, were I to live to a ripe old age, I didn't want anything that ugly marring my skin. And I've never looked back.

I like this perspective, too:

Statistically speaking, tattoos are a craze of epidemic proportions - and a ghastly cliché. One in five Brits has one, and one in two Americans. May I quote the much-tattooed Ozzy Osbourne here? "If you want to be f***ing individual," he once said, "don't get a tattoo. Every f***er's got one these days."

So very, very true, Ozzy.  I mean, is there anything less rebellious anymore than some douche with a "tribal" design or a band of barbed wire on his bicep?  Or a chick with an animal on her ankle or, even worse, a "tramp stamp" on the small of her back?

Anyway, read the whole thing, especially for some good celebrity mocking.

Update: Lemur King, who is apparently an Illustrated Man, provides some food for thought in the comments.

I don't mean to imply that I think nobody should get tattoos.  I just think the mainstreaming of tattoos has been a bad thing, probably more so for people like Lemur King, who says he thought long and hard before getting each of his tats—they each mean something to him—than anybody else.  These days, any idiot can go out and get a couple of Chinese characters (which probably translate to "dumb whitey," by the way, in spite of what you've been told they mean) and  think he's some kind of badass.  And don't even get me started on moms with tattoos.  Un.  Effing.  Cool.

Adults are free to do lots of stupid-ass things with their bodies, but I think people should think long and hard about doing something that's more or less permanent (unless you want to spend a lot of money for painful dermatological treatment) just to think of yourself as a rebel when, chances are, half the people you know think of themselves as rebels for the same misguided reason.

And, no, I'll still never get one.  Because it's just not me.

Posted by: Sean M. at 11:54 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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