Why is there this gender disparity?
In our society, women decorate themselves more than men do?
For a very, VERY long time it was exceedingly taboo for women to get ink.
EXCEEDINGLY !
Interesting coincidence, some family members are texting back and forth, just making conversation. My brother-in-law was talking about training new hires, and he is disappointed in young men because the young women are so much better. About the girls, joking, he said “they think tattoos make them look so tough, but stitches tell a much better story.” And I just now read your question. Maybe there is a subset of women who really do think that having tattoos will make them look more confident/tough/not-to-be-messed-with. That’s just a guess though. I don’t care if people get tattoos, but they don’t appeal to me and I never had the slightest interest in getting one.
Seems about right in my observations at work. We have a lot of young people coming and going. The women are much more likely to be inked. The amount of tattoos some of these girls have by their early twenties is kind of alarming to this old fart.
Years ago someone on this board mentioned a theory that many of the standard aspects of female attire started with prostitutes, strippers and other women of ill repute before filtering up to the masses. I believe makeup, nylons, and high heels were things mentioned. I don’t know if that is true but I know that back in the 90s I started noticing women in porn were getting very inky and now it seems to be very mainstream.
The other thing I observe is how crappy a lot of the tattoo work they get is. I think they check to see where the closest tattoo shop is and then go in and ask for whatever’s on sale.
Most of the males I know with tattoos are former military, or former inmates. I don’t think men are getting them as decoration but as tribal markings.
Women don’t get tattoos to “look tough” because most women don’t care about alpha male crap. Women get them as decoration. I know a lot of women who have tasteful, quite pretty tattoos on places that don’t show when wearing work attire. Also, those stats the OP posted may include women who get “makeup tattoos” namely tattoos that replace makeup such as eyeliner and the like, something very few men are likely to get.
I’m not a huge fan of the tramp stamp. I don’t need to be entertained when I’m driving. 
Women may be more sentimental than men. People like to get sentimental tattoos.
Men don’t need a tattoo to show their manhood.
These days, phone cameras are much more practical.
Interesting.
Partially, one explanation is that tats are a trend right now, and women tend to follow trends more than men. Maybe the male percentage has remained unaltered, while the female percentage has grown a lot?
If not, if the male percentage is decreasing, could it be that tattoos are beginning to be seen as a female thing?
They’re getting free ones from their loser boyfriends who are ‘practicing’ to be tattoo artists.
For most of Western history tattoos were the explicit definition of gruff, hard as nails, low-brow manliness. Think sailors with a big anchor on their upper arm and ‘MOTHER’ underneath. After WWII the Baby Boomers became the hippies and tattoos were both old-school establishment conformity and still closely associated with the military. So they fell out of favor for a generation.
By the late 90s chicks brought them back (along with piercings) as more ‘body art’ than manliness. Plus they had been out of fashion for so long that now they were anti-establishment, extra-so for women. They crept into the male world as well, but they’ve still got a whiff of metro-sexual, body art, peacocking to them, which a large percentage of guys find unappealing.
I’m curious what percentage women’s tattoos are visible in everyday clothes.
My unscientific sampling from pool- and lake-side events is roughly half of the ladies have tattoos, but you wouldn’t know it at the office. The men are more likely to have ink that is visible in normal attire.
A lot of those that are will fall under “permanent makeup”, which spamforbrains already mentioned. If done correctly, they’re visible but not noticeable as being tats. Permanent eyeliner looks exactly like temporary eyeliner.
I spend some time in tattoo shops, and it seems to me I see equal numbers of men and women.
The dudes are more likely to be working on sleeves or back pieces, while the dudettes are more often getting a kitty face on their ankle.
What about the women getting their private areas tattooed and pieced. What was that “vajazzling” where thyey would get crystals implanted and then now its “vatooing”.
Yeah a few guys have done some odd stuff but its bigger with women.
They also get tattoos of say flowers on their hips which I guess looks great when they wear a bikini.
Just a guess from me, not having tattoos myself but this being consistent with what I’ve seen on tattoo shows and such, is that women are more likely to get tattoos, but men are more likely to get many tattoos. I’ve met plenty of women that get some small sentimental butterfly or whatever, but I don’t see very many women with LOTS of tattoos. OTOH, I see plenty of men who have lots of tattoos, often larger and in more visible places. So, I guess if we assume that the amount of tatoo work being done between the sexes is probably similar, it’s just half as many men are getting twice as much work.
My sister is 51. She decided she was going to get one tat for each year in her 30s (or was it 40s? I don’t recall.) Anyway, she’s got close to 30 now, many very visible, tho none on her face. Most of them have personal significance - like the greyhound (she’s rescued 2) or the logo of the bar where she works. For whatever reason, that’s how she chooses to remember certain aspects of her life. It has nothing to do with showing that she’s tough, but (my opinion) a lot to do with liking to be noticed - occasionally augmented with bright, unnatural hair colors.
At the very least, it’ll make her body easy to identify… :eek: