[QUOTE=gravitycrash]
No offense to the ladies in this this thread but I find tattoos a complete turn off. I guess I could be considered an old fart but I just don’t find them attractive on females at all.
[/QUOTE]
Hey, no hate from me here. There’s no accounting for taste 
Seriously though, I will never fault someone for their personal preferences and attractions. What I object to is…
[QUOTE=JohnT]
Naw, what’s really funny is that poor Eleanor is being taken to task (in 2 threads nonetheless) for agreeing and expanding on something that I originally said in the Sacred Cows thread.
[/QUOTE]
…what I object to is not the idea that tattoos are “fugly”, but the idea that there is no one who doesn’t eventually regret their tattoos. That’s why I responded to eleanorigby’s comment and not yours. There’s nothing I find objectionable about your thought.
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
No worries-at least about this thread. 
I think the OP just pulled a quote from me–I don’t feel any strong hate vibes coming in on my tinfoil hat.
[/quote]
Oh, of course not. Like I said, it seems to be a common idea expressed whenever the topic of tattoos comes up. You just happened to be the first to say it, this time
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
As to the question, can we quit grousing about tattoos, I say no. I have no desire to start an anti-tattoo campaign, but one thing here is the freedom to speak your mind, within limits. Expressing an opinion about something like tattoos is hardly hate speech or inflammatory, so the right to do so I will defend. So, I’ll grouse and you’ll grouse back. Sounds like a whole lot of threads here.
[/QUOTE]
I’m agreeable to that, too.
I don’t even mind when people complain about tattoos or how ugly they are and how they destroy a woman’s appearance or any other personal opinion on the topic, so I guess the thread title is way off on that one. What I mind is the idea that WhyNot expressed–that anyone else knows best what I feel about my body and my appearance, and the judgment that implies. Also the inherent judgment about a tattooed person’s… what? Lack of impulse control? Lack of foresight? Lack of ambition or future plans? Or just their regrettable decision-making history, in (generic) your eyes? There’s a world of difference between “I dislike tattoos and wish women wouldn’t get them” and “everyone regrets getting a tattoo and if you get one, you’ll eventually hate it, too”.
[QUOTE=NightRabbit]
And what about if only other people could see it and you couldn’t (i.e. on your back)? Seems to me that a tattoo that you can’t see, and other people also can’t see, is sort of the definition of useless. No one would go for that! Hence, they’re plainly meant for SOMEONE to see.
[/QUOTE]
Well, I feel pretty qualified to answer this, seeing as how the majority of my current work is on my back.
It starts on my upper right shoulder cap and across the nape of my neck, runs down my lumbar area and across my left hip. Of the currently completed work, the only piece I’m able to see without mirrors is the shoulder cap and the tip of a hawk’s wing. I’ve showed it to friends who know it’s in progress and have specifically asked to see it, but otherwise the only one to ever see it is my husband (and, I suppose, my tattoo artist). My husband doesn’t care much one way or the other about body modifications, so I certainly didn’t get them for him. Most of the time am dressed in a hoodie and jeans, so while I do have a forearm tattoo, it’s a simple line drawing; the really elaborate work can’t be seen.
Why did I do it? It’s an excellent question. It’s taken solid days of work–eight hours in a tattoo chair, many days–which is painful, stressful, supremely unpleasant. Imagine rows of sewing machine needles buzzing into your top dermal layers, creating open wounds which the needles rake over and over, in the coloring process. It’s incredibly, remarkably expensive. I get a cost break for such a large project and for buying whole days worth of work at a time, but even still, other than my car, my tattoo work and my dog are the two most valuable things I own, and together their purchase value comes to more than the car.
I did it for spiritual reasons; some of the images are animal totems (blue armadillo, purple platypus), some are protection and healing symbols (waxing/full/waning moons, rowan berries, willow branches, water) some are friends I’ve known (a Harris’ hawk, hairless rat). I did it as a way to “reclaim” my skin and my body as my own. I did it to tell a story, even if no one will read it. I did it to carry around a gorgeous piece of installation art on my hide. Also, the experience is something like an ongoing private piece of performance art. A lesson in endurance and testing of limits. I did it just for the fun of it; there’s a bit of cheeky glee in the idea that I look completely unremarkable to the public world; but… It’s a beautiful secret piece of myself.
I chose my back because it’s the largest blank canvas on your body, and I designed the art to fit the space. Eventually I will be able to see at least some of it–the next stage will blend the backpiece into one that wraps around my left thigh and knee–but the fact that I can’t see my backpiece doesn’t make it any less meaningful to me. Since I didn’t get it with the desire to affect/please/appall other people in the first place, the fact that they can’t see it surely doesn’t bother me.
I can’t answer for other folks, but there you are.
