When my brother came home with a barbed wire tatt around his left bicep, I think he thought our parents were going to go spare. Dad looked at it and just said mildly “Well that will keep the rats from running up your arm”.
I don’t have any tatts. There’s not an article of clothing that I own that I think I’ll want to be wearing in twenty years, no hairstyle that I haven’t tired of within a couple of years (at most), no home decoration that I haven’t eventually felt the urge to update. I wouldn’t want to put a piece of art on my body that I can’t easily remove when fashion or my tastes change.
Well, mine isn’t in any of the “Cisco-ian” proscribed categories - I have a large-ish land dragon crawling up my right calf with a single Chinese character that represents my name phonetically. At least, that’s what the waitress told me the next night. I was a sailor in Hong Kong, so the Chinese character thing was (I thought) kind of inspired. That tattoo will be 30 years old in January, which is probably older than most of the posters pontificating on their skin art in this thread.
That Hong Kong trip also gave me a view of the absolute worst tattoo I’ve ever seen. The night after I got mine, I went back to the same tattoo parlor to see if anyone from my ship was hanging out. Apparently, it was later than I realized, as there was only a single customer in the place, and he was being rather noisy in a Holy Crap, that hurts!! kind of way. So I wandered back to see what the commotion was about and saw a very drunk (drunker than me, which was a feat on that night) sailor getting a tattoo of a happy face directly on the head of Mr. Happy! I admit I’m not really a good person, because I laughed so hard I almost fell down. What a putz!
Pretty much my thoughts on the issue. I can’t come up with a tat that I would want to have on me 20 years down the road.
One of my friends married a guy with full-sleeve tattoos. It was fine when he was an unemployed hipster but he ran into trouble trying to get a job. He had very expensive and not altogether successful laser treatments to get rid of them.
My twelve-year old daughter is a big fan of 2006 American Idol Jordin Sparks’s song Tattoo. I rib her a little whenever it comes on, by reminding her that at 18, Jordin Sparks is too young to get drunk.
I personally love tattoos, but if you don’t like them, hey, whatever. I definitely think that you should choose a tattoo thoughtfully, but I don’t think “it’ll look silly when you’re 80” or “what if you don’t like that symbol/band/etc. in the future?” are legitimate reasons to hate tattoos. For one thing, most of my body is going to look pretty silly when I’m 80, inked or not. Secondly, while I don’t think you should run out and get that Furby tattoo (or Bowser, surfing and wailing on a two-headed guitar) as soon as you think about it, change is a part of life. Just because your favorite band has changed, or you don’t happen to love that same poem you once did, doesn’t mean you can’t honor the person you once were.
I agree; getting a tattoo is like have an article of clothing sewn into your skin. (Henna tattoos can be nice - since, of course, they wear off.) But you have to admit that some are worse than others. Some are unobtrusive and maybe even original. Some not so much. One tattoo linked to in this thread is just indescribably hideous; I cannot imagine how anyone wouldn’t find it tremendously embarassing.
That’s an absolutely lovely way to look at it. And although I still adore all of my tattoos, I can imagine that’s a more healthy attitude to have if your feelings do change than to hate the ink you’ve gotten.
Anyway, I happily have broken two of Cisco’s Top 10. I got a “tramp stamp” long before I even knew what they were called, largely for the reasons EJsGirl initially described. Then, I have incorporated into it some kanji to echo that which my significant other has on his arm. It’s our unity thing and since no one else has to see it… < shrug > In other words, we’re both thrilled with 'em, sorry if others are not.
Finally, I’ve begun to see pictures of tattooed elderly folk and I get more of a kick out of looking at their pictures than I do of those without. Just a personal preference, I’m sure, but I’m even finding that as I age, the more I like the effect of lots of ink instead of less. < another shrug > Obviously, all our mileage varies.
I think people have maybe conflated a woman’s getting tattooed in that area with the idea of a property stamp, which is a 1%'er thing – the words “Property of…[either the club’s name if she’s considered to be public pussy, or that of her husband/boyfriend if she’s spoken for]” , which has gotten a bad public perception due to the negative image many regular citizens have of outlaw bikers, their female consorts, and (until quite recently) tattooed women in general.
That’s pretty much how I feel. I don’t hate tattoos or anything - I’m the only one in my family that doesn’t have any; mom, dad, older brother, and younger sis all have tattoos. Starting around age 15 I would sit around and think about the tattoos I was going to get when I turned 18. When the day came I reflected on whether I had settled on one or not, and then something clicked and I thought "wait, the ones I want now aren’t the same as the ones I wanted 3 years ago . . . so 3 years from now . . . " It was like a little lightbulb came on and all of my desire to have a tattoo dissapeared and it’s never come back. I am not opposed to getting one if it had very deep personal meaning - commemorating a great accomplishment, honoring a very close loved one, etc - but I just have absolutely no desire to “decorate”.
And it’s not like I sit around fuming about these 10 tattoos - - friends and family have some of them. It’s just a funny little thing I wrote on the spur of the moment. I do believe it’s silly (more than annoying), that some of the things that are supposed to be unique and personal are so common that many people were reading the OP of this thread and nodding along in agreement . . .
And come on, you’ve gotta admit that it’s a little unfair when someone gets a tattoo on their face or neck or hands, or full sleeves, and then cries victimhood that people are “judging” him or her - you got them because you wanted attention! They are not deeply personal and they obviously aren’t private, you got what you wanted!
And anyone annoyed at my “annoyance” - you’re not supposed to care what I think about your tattoos, right?
