Same here. Not many of us around here, don’t look like.
I, nor Mr. Adoptamom, care for tattoos and have asked our kids not to get them while they live with us. For those of you who will protest that we’re stifling their creativity and individuality - tough noogies. They have the rest of their lives to express their creativity after they move out. They can wait.
One of our daughters, who joined our family through foster care, had tattoos when she came to us - the homemade kind consisting of initials on her hand and one knee. She’s now a grown, married woman of 23 and a couple of years ago had the names of her children tattooed down the outside of each calf in big, bold letters:::shudder::: . She didn’t ask my opinion before she got them, nor did she ask for it after she got them, so I kept my mouth shut BUT my inside voice kept looping “why have you permanently marred your body???” She wants more tattoos but her husband has told her that if she gets one more he’ll consider leaving. I silently thank him for his voice of reason.
I have four tats. Three are under clothing. My most recent one is on the inner aspect of my right forearm, the Greek letters for “Grace of God”…but then, I’m an Episcopal minister in my late 40s. Having preached about all sorts of things, including tats, most of my parishioners weren’t surprized to see the latest addition to “The Rev’s collection”.
If people with tats are low class, poor, uneducated riff-raff, so be it. If I read my Gospels correctly, those are the kinds of folks that Jesus hung out with. Hell, if Jesus were around today he wouldn’t be at the White House or some fancy restaraunt, he’d be under a viaduct somewhere keeping company with the homeless folks and drunks.
The kind of people who would look down on me for having tattoos are the kind of people I avoid anyway.
I think tattoos can be extremely beautiful and sexy, and I think they can also be really tacky and ugly. It just depends on the artwork and the person wearing it.
I don’t like tattoos. Sue me. That was the question asked and I answered it. I also think tube tops are tacky and men shouldn’t wear socks with sandals. But do it if you want and if it makes you happy. Why do you care what I think?
StG
I don’t like tattoos, but whatever. Not the end of the world. I wouldn’t get one, I’m happy that my fiancée doesn’t have any, but what people want to do with their own bodies is their own business.
I do, however, have an odd, visceral reaction to temporary tattoos - stick-on, henna, that sort of thing. They just gross me right out. I can’t stand to see them. It doesn’t make sense, but I figure everyone has their odd phobia, and this can be mine. Just don’t try to draw on me, please.
Why do you care what anyone thinks about what you think?
Your first and fifth sentences would have sufficed, no need for the anticipatory defensiveness. Attitudes like yours are what the tattooed folk in this thread have been (relatively) happy to see. 
**Misnomer[/b[ - I think I was reacting to Indygrrl’s post. I have friends and family with tats (although none who were tube tops, thank God). I don’t refuse to be seen with them, I eat with them, I even speak speak to them in public. 
StG
Mmmm… tuuuube tooops!!! On the right lady…devastating!
I tend to distinguish between tattoos that are what I consider artistic and those that are just random collections slapped on wherever there’s space. I’ve seen people with lots of tattoos that are a unified theme that look good, or very large tattoos that are beautifully done, but I just don’t understand why people want to get bad art slapped randomly on their body permanently. But hey, that’s their choice.
The ones I really don’t understand are the ones who get eyeliner tattooed on, however. I have a friend who just spent a small fortune for a facelift, and apparently got tattooed brown eyeliner at the same time, so now her eyes will forever look small and beady since they’re ringed by permanent lines of brown. Who would do that to themselves? I just really do not get it.
There are also the rare tattoos that I consider almost disfiguring. Like the young woman I saw at a concert a couple years ago who I did a doubletake over when I realized she wasn’t wearing a black ribbon around her neck, she had a solid inch-wide circle of black tattooed on with a row of “pendants” tattooed on like they were hanging below it. It went way beyond self-expression to borderline self-mutilation, if you ask me. Obviously just my opinion, but I was far from the only person taken aback by her.
To me they’re just another form of self-expression, like the way you wear your hair, or the clothes you wear. However, the difference is that they are PERMANENT, you can’t grow them out or change them for something different. So if I was going to get one, I’d think damn hard about what kind of tattoo I wanted and where on my body it would be. One of my dad’s oldest friends, who is now a mild-mannered middle-aged guy, has a giant snarling leopard crawling up his forearm, the result of a whim and peer-pressure when he was 17 and got drunk for the first time. He’s been to dermatologists and consulted with laser-surgeons, and they tell him it’s too large and uses too much dye to be removable. So he’s stuck with it.
I saw a programme where a young woman got her eyebrows tattooed on. She had a permanent look of surprise, as it wasn’t done very well. She was rather pleased with it however.
That’s funny!! Imagine the effect if she also was surpised how they looked the first time she saw them!!
I think tattoos can be incredible works of art. Of course there are some that are not so great as well. A magician friend of mine has some of the most intricate work I have ever seen. Now I do feel that they don’t make someone instantly cool when they get them. And it just seems like strong personality types(musicians, performers et al) seem the most suited for tats. When I see some accountant with a tattoo it just seems out of place.
Getting back to the Match.com thing. Tattoos is listed as one of my turnoffs. I don’t like them for myself or my SO. I had been chatting with a lady for a few weeks when she finally asked what I thought of tattoos and I hemmed and hawed thinking she was gonna say she already had one. It wasn’t mentioned in her profile so I thought maybe she was about to admit having one. But she brought up the idea of getting her first. Then I didn’t think it would be right to discourage her just because I don’t like them and since she was iffy it was possible she wouldn’t go through with it.
But one day she calls me up and she’d had it done. I was so disapointed, she really was quite a nice woman. So I just couldn’t go on after that and we eventually ended all correspondence.
Yep, that’s exactly the point I was trying to make when I brought up Match.com: a guy will seem very promising in every other regard, then I get to the bottom of his profile and see “turn-offs: tattoos.” It doesn’t make him a bad person (I really was kidding with the “judgmental” generalization), it just makes him not right for me. It’s frustrating, but ultimately c’est la vie.
And FWIW, it’s not just tattoos: the same thing happens when most of a guy’s profile sounds awesome but then it says that he’s very conservative, or that he definitely wants kids (usually 3, for some reason), or he admits to being a drug user (not on Match.com, but the other on-line service I use has a yes/no for drug use, right after smoking and drinking). Like with the tattoos, I don’t think that any of those things (or men) are wrong, they’re just not right for me.
Speaking in favour of tattoos.
Ever since I was sixteen, I knew the tattoo I wanted.
I waited until I was 26 to have it done, and I love it!
I had a leonard cohen sketch put on my ankle. No one person has influenced my writing in the way that he has, and the drawing reminds me of my youth when I thought I would grow up to marry Leonard. It also reminds me of blessing, inspiration and beauty.
Since I waited 10 years, and my opinion hasn’t changed in that time, I think it’ll stick.
I love tattoos and the stories that they can tell. A close friend recently had his forearms done with highly personal illustrations, and I think they are not only beautiful, but a visual representation of his priorities, his mindset and his idea of family.
Beyond that, I find nothing wrong with turning the body into a canvas. We proudly wear our wrinkles as a visual representation of the passage of time. How can it be offensive to mark the passages of your life with art? I’m sure, even in my sixties, I will look at my tattoo and smile, remembering either youthful indiscretion or that feeling I had when I first fell in love with writing.
I invariably find a modified body attractive. I love peircings and I love tattoos. I embraced every second both times I had a peircing done and the time I had my tattoo. I look forward to the second one. It was a rite of passage for me, and I am pleased I had it done. I love the secret connection I have with the people I meet who have been tattooed.
That being said, I have no respect for impulsive tattoos. I thought long and hard about what I wanted, waited until I had the right artist and I knew it was right for me… no tweety birds on my shoulders!
R
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Tattoos: blecch. Total turn-off for me as well.
Time + tattoos = ugly crap.
People who follow the herd of sheep and think “inking” themselves is showing some sort of creativity or independence: get a grip. It does neither. I suppose it could, theoretically, but the vast, vast majority of tattoos are crappy, cliched, boring, ugly. People get them for the shallowest and vainest of reasons.
The nicest thing I can say about tattoos is when they’re discreet and unobtrusive.
Hookers, pornographers, and strippers wear lotsa tattoos. You want to associate yourself with that crowd, be my guest.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
You present this as your only reason for vehemently disliking tattoos, but surely you realize that people who fall into your “sheep” category are not representative of all tattooed folk? As I asked way back in post #55, why be prejudiced against an entire culture just because of a few people who make it look bad?
You start and end your post with “there’s no accounting for taste,” which implies that you simply don’t like tattoos, which is fine. Even your first two statements are merely opinion – no harm, no foul. But there is a difference between opinion and generalized prejudice, and you can’t have it both ways.
Funny, I have two tattoos yet I have no idea of the tattoo preferences of hookers, pornographers, and strippers. Seems to me that having such knowledge is what indicates an association with “that” crowd, hmm?
Personally speaking, if I don’t find a woman attractive, a tattoo isn’t going to improve things.
If I do find the woman attractive, I know I’d still prefer the bare flesh over the inked one.
I don’t think it’s just a few people making tattoos look bad. I don’t think anyone can argue that at this point, getting tattoos is firmly in the “trend” area, and a lot of people getting them are doing it to be trendy. They may have other reasons as well, but “Because all my friends (or all the cool kids) are doing it” is part of the reasons (possibly only subconsciously).