Jobs involving tattoo removal will be plentiful in coming years.
I can’t see how you could ever regret that.
I really, really, reallyreally want to see pics. Please.
Everyone who’s gotten tattoos say once you get one, you’ll become addicted to it.
That is probably the reason why you might think it is becoming overplayed. In a way, they are. Some people have amazing tattoos. Most of them nowadays do not. And these younger kids will get tattoos of things that don’t explain them, don’t mean anything to them, etc. Like a tattoo in Chinese that means patience or virtue but the person will have neither qualities. Some people will get a paragraph written on their arm.
I don’t have a single tattoo and I don’t plan on getting any. I always wanted one but the line of profession I am working towards do not hire if you have visible tattoos. Sorry but the ability to provide for my family is far more important than tatting up my body.
This statistic is meaningless, because (should it be accurate) it covers so many different tattoo situations that it doesn’t tell you much of any particular situation.
It’s kind of like how the divorce rate is 40%. Scary, right?
Except that this rate drops drastically, to a mere 21%, for marriages among college graduates over 26. A few other key factors, including religious compatibility, financial situation and timing of any children, play a key role in divorce rates. In other words, with a little bit of planning, you can avoid the major factors that contribute to that 40% rate. The scare statistic is utterly irrelevant to large swathes of people.
I imagine tattoo regret has some similar key factors…things like age that you got it, period of time you considered it, quality of the art, personal level of meaning, etc.
You can’t compare the marriage of two like-minded professional 30 year olds ready to raise a family to a shotgun high school wedding of two mismatched broke kids. Likewise, you can’t compare a teenager’s homemade gang tattoo they got while drunk at a house party to a nice piece of art with deep personal meaning on a 40 year old who considered their design for five years.
I get the same - I’m a lesbian, under 40, and I was in a band, so people are genuinely surprised when they find out I don’t have a tattoo.
I don’t have one largely because they take time and money and my time and money have always been better spent on something else. I actually have a specific tattoo in mind that I might get someday, but until then, if there were a fire at a party I attended, it’d be easy to identify me by me not having tattoos.
The old people I’ve seen with tattoos - and we’re talking old-school tattoos, not as good as today - actually do look kinda cool. Unless you go for an image which requires the skin to be absolutely pristine and non-saggy then it still looks as good as the saggy untattooed skin around it, but more interesting.
I’d agree with all this. Also, it would depend how the question was phrased - I’m sure *some *people have regretted some of their tattoos some of the time. I’ve known people have parts of their tattoos covered up for one reason or another, so they regretted that part of the tattoo, but not having tattoos per se, and their regret was short-lived.
SDMB threads about them certainly are.
Why get a tattoo? To express your individuality? Like everyone else?
A few days ago I saw a woman with puppy paw prints tattooed up the back of her leg. Maybe a dozen or more paw prints, all in a dark blue ink.
:eek: 
Get a tattoo it you want. It’s neither here nor there to me. But could someone explain to me the waitress with the word “Hollywood” tattooed horizontally on the side of her neck?
She seemed like a decent sane person, but there it was, “hollywood”, there for life in a place that could only be covered with a high turtleneck.
This might sound weird and I don’t know why I feel it but tattoos just remind me of our mortality. One day those lovely images painted on our skin will rot like the rest of us. I dislike tattoos but I’ve made my peace with them. Some are genuine works of art, others are half-baked, incompetently scrawled, or just plain ugly. If you would like a tattoo, have at it. I don’t think what any of us will look like at 80 or 90 has a whit of relevance as to whether you choose to decorate your body like that.
This argument and all its variations don’t hold water. “Why wear a shirt? To be just like everyone else? Why wear jewelry to be just like everyone else?” Except shirts and jewelry are rarely unique or one of a kind. But each and every tattoo is unique to the wearer and the artist, like snowflakes, no two alike.
So what you’re saying is that people express their individuality by getting a different tattoo then all other tattoos.
No, it’s meaningful, but it may turn out to be irrelevant given further detail. Again, if I was about to do something irreversible I sure as hell would want to know if it had a 30% chance of going wrong. It may well be the case that, looking into it further, it would turn out that in my particular situation it only had a 1% chance of going wrong. But I would want to know, at the outset, that there was overall a 30% issue rate so that I knew to look into it further. To say, as you do, that the initial broadbrush problem rate is “meaningless” is ridiculous. General broad brush information is something we use all the time to shape our choices and let us know where to drill down. Just because something has further, important, layers of detail doesn’t make it “meaningless”.
Mmm hmm, exactly. Were you under the impression tattoos were done by a machine using a template?
Again, this assumption that they are doing it out of some sort of drive for individuality. I didn’t get my tattoo’s for that reason. I’m not rebelling against a damn thing.
I got them because originally they had some meaning, and since then I have incorporated the original Kanji’s into larger artwork (working on half sleeves right now) that are, to me, beautiful. And still meaningful, to me.
I’m not rebelling. I’m not trying to be “different”… there are much more visible ways to be “different” that are probably cheaper. Not my thing, thanks. I work in the corporate world, and for the most part nobody knows I have tats unless it comes up.
don’t get any prison tattoos, don’t get any tattoos from some guy with a needle and some india ink, don’t get any tattoos declaring your love for the white race (esp if you are Mexican, talk about a guy who is going to regret that tatt down the road), don’t get any tattoos because you “want/need” a tattoo.
now your problem of the possibility of regretting your tatts has been reduced to near zero.
in other words people make bad decisions all the time, I am a little surprised that more people don’t regret tatts they got when younger and dumber when I think of all the stupid crap I did growing up.
It sounds like you’re accusing me of being unfeeling toward someone I know of only through your cautionary anti-tattoo story. I’m not saying anything bad about this person. I’m saying that given the picture you’ve painted of her it’s not surprising she had some regrets about her life when she was old. I think that makes her a shitty cautionary tale about tattoos, but I’m not the one who brought her up in that context.
Then they’re not giving advice (per your yacht example). They’re just venting about stuff they don’t like. They’re welcome to do so, but you probably wouldn’t expect people who didn’t ask them to vent in the first place to thank them for it.
I don’t have tattoos, don’t drink, don’t smoke, and I don’t drink caffeine either. {Preens at her hardcoreness.} 
Absolutely! Can we please have some threads started to bitch about plastic surgery?
Just wait until February - that’s Rape Month.
As apollonia said, that “problem” has been pretty well de-bunked. The problem now is doctors who are willing to make medical decisions based on a non-existent problem in the name of covering their asses.
I totally need to get into that field. 
I brought her up as an example of what a person in their 80s with tattoos looks like. Apparently my experience is somewhat rare. But seriously, if you wish to know what tattoos on seniors look like, just volunteer at your local VA hospital.
As I said, she was a family friend. I had the most extraordinary childhood, and met people in every walk of life from politicians to porn stars. And the thing is, tattoos, more than any other single thing you can do limits your options in life. The best example I can offer is Sibel Kekilli, an award-winning German actress of Turkish decent. When she won “Best Actress” for her role in the film Gegen die Wand, her previous career as a porn star under the name “Dilara” was revealed by Deutsche Welle. If she didn’t have those stupid tattoos, she could quite possibly have stonewalled the press.
I’ll let gaffa say why he felt the fact was relevant to tattoos in particular.
All of us make decisions all the time for our future selves. Some are as irrevocable as tattoos, some of more profound consequence.
To the extent that the truism has a specific applicability to tattoos, I would say that it’s in the fact that people are generally very aware, at the time of getting a tattoo, that it is a decision for a future self, as they may not be for other life-choices that develop more slowly or without as much conscious direction.
Sometimes the choice-for-future-self is exactly the whole point–to insure that a present moment, concept or identity cannot be left behind; to constrain and define the future self deliberately, rather than somewhat inadvertently as in so many other instances.