Well, certainly you’ve gotta appreciate the *total commitment *of single-theme full body tattoos.
Both of mine are commemorative. The first is a ring tattoo; Ms. P and I each got one on our anniversary one year. The other commemorates the Nationals’ World Series win last year.
One of those images was marked with the caption, “Think before you ink.”
Definitely.
Why re they popular now?
Because everyone want s to show their individuality in the same way. Lack of imagination. Everyone else is doing it, so I have to, too.
“I dunno… I can see marrying a girl, buying a house together, having a few kids… but a tattoo? It’s so permanent!” -Drake Sather
Have tattoos become more color-fast (I know that’s not exactly the right word) in the last few decades? There are two reasons that I’d never have considered a tattoo, back when I was young.
One was that most of the tattoos I had seen were on older men and they had gotten blotchy. When my dad was in the army, he got his identification number tattooed on his leg, which was apparently a thing in the group he was serving with. The idea being that if you got blown to pieces, they could identify which leg went with the rest of you. I think I was about four when I first remember seeing it, and by then the digits were too blotchy to read.
The other reason is that I have bad skin, and it would end up looking bad.
Hey, I recognize The Enigma! He was in an episode of the X-Files.
Carl Zimmer wrote a book about scientists getting Science Ink. Before the collection was a book, he’d post pictures of them on his science blog as they came in. A lot of them were very cool. The idea of getting a tattoo to commemorate your degree or your career is also cool.
The only science ink that ever left me even vaguely considering getting it was done by an arachnologist. It was a scorpion done in UV ink. It didn’t show at all unless there was a black light on it.
What* I’ve* gotta do is question the professional ethics of some plastic surgeons. Dermal implants are one thing. Cutting off someone’s nose? There’s no way that’s ethical.
IME tattoos vary in discomfort based on location (near the armpit is horrible), the artist’s skill, and the length of time being tattooed (four hours is my max). My ink done by Pittsburgh’s Bob “Moose” Retter (RIP) hurt like hell because Moose was heavy handed, but I loved his style so I lived with the pain. Work done by other artists hurt much less.
There used to be a sadistic tattoo artist locally who would tell a naive customer, already in discomfort, that he had to “set the ink” once the work was done, by repeatedly slapping the area. Ouch. I was hanging out in a shop once and the customer asked if the artist was going to “set the ink”. The artist immediately understood and explained.
And it’s for this very reason that I will never have one. God forbid that I still sported the same hairstyle I had in the 80s, or was forced to adopt same baggy grunge look I thought was so cool in the 90s.
To the OP, I think they have, very gradually, become more socially acceptable as casual style statements have increased, and with that comes popularity. Fashions have changed, informal modes of dress have lost their shock value, it’s ok to wear jeans to many jobs, so tattoos are one of the last ways we can break down taboos.
People like dressing up and making individual style statements. In my youth, it meant getting my ears pierced so I could wear crazy earrings. If I’d been born 20 years later, I probably would have got a tattoo for the same reason. And would now be regretting it.
I’ll wager that the next generation or so will avoid tattoos, because who wants to do what your parents do? That’s so uncool.
May well be. I got my tattoo when I was 41; I’d always wanted to have a tattoo but I put it off because of conventional wisdom about “regretting” it later. Fifteen years on, I don’t regret it in the least.
(However, I’m not sorry that the tattoo I got isn’t the one I wanted as a teenager, namely the equation featured in Fermat’s Last Theorem. Now that the theorem’s been proved, it just wouldn’t seem as inspiring.)
I know a lot of people with tattoos. I don’t know anyone who regrets it, except my brother who thought it would be romantic to put his wife’s name on his arm. He just went back and covered it up when he remarried.
Maybe those of us who don’t get tattoos are not getting them for the right reasons and the people who are getting tattoos are doing what’s right for them.
This.
I always chuckle when people without tattoos go on about how awful they are. I’ve never heard a person with tattoos talk about how awful people without ink are.
Have you seen the Numberphile YouTube video where Brady Haran explains Fermat’s Last Theorem? (if it’s the one I’m thinking of, it was very good)
:rolleyes: You know, I always see people on this board claim this as a reason, but on what basis? What evidence is there for this? This is nothing more than someone who doesn’t like tattoos making up a reason for people to get them that makes you able to look down on them. Because if someone does something you don’t like, they must be less intelligent and lack critical thinking.
You’re being kind of generous in assuming that whoever did that was any sort of actual licensed professional, and not one of his skinhead buddies who got a set of scalpels off of eBay.
Not necessarily Look the modern neck tie. It’s been around, unchanged, for almost 200 years. Hell the entire business suit is largely unchanged for at least as long. As for informal fashion, jeans are still quite popular–goings strong for over a century.
I’m going to be the most interesting guy by having no tattoos. Just wait.
More or less. Once Parents and bosses have tattoos, kids will think they are stupid.
Parents already have tattoos.
People have already been claiming for decades that they are some passing fad that the next generation will have less interest in. Hasn’t happened yet.
Eh, not sure. People don’t tend to think that, say, the very concepts of hair and jewelry and makeup and backpacks and shaving are stupid just because of what their parents do with them.
Younger generations do tend to rethink what qualifies as a cool style or trend within such cultural practices, but they don’t typically reject them altogether. So one generation might think the previous generation’s preferred colors or styles of tattoos are stupid, but still get tattoos themselves in different colors or styles.
My guess is that tattoos have moved out of the “fashion of the moment” category shared with fads like fidget spinners and lilac-grey dye jobs, and into the category of “lifestyle choice”, such as whether or not you wear makeup or prefer your hair short or long. Some people in any generation will like a particular lifestyle choice and others will not, but it’s not going to become automatically uncool for the entirety of one generation just because some people in the previous generation liked it.
I’m going to wait until I’m 80 then I’m getting a bunch. All faded, blurry and smudged beyond recognition.
