There was a peacoat fad in Baltimore, Maryland when I was about 12 or 13 (1966 or 1967). My father let me wear the one he wore in the Navy during WWII.
When your sagging mom has a rose just above where her tits used to be, it’s hard to see tats a rebellious, manly thing to do.
I get absolutely sick to my stomach to see that in some places tooth grills are becoming quite fashionable.
Ack! Please tell me you just made this up with Photo Shop or Paintbrush or something…
My mom’s had a butterfly tattoo on her stomach for about forty years now. Still doesn’t regret it.
I’m going to go with “never.”
My great-aunt had a tattoo of a rose on her thigh. Yeah, it made it a little less edgy to me. 
Sorry to say, but grills are the big thing now. Ugly as all hell, but the rap crowd took “put your money where your mouth is” a bit too literaly.
I guess I’m the only one who thinks that old people have tattoos just make those old people cooler, rather than the tattoos lamer.
I don’t think they’ll be passe so much as just sunk to the level that acrylic nails or dyed hair or ear piercings are now - a fashion rather than a fad. I hope future generations will have better judgement about what to get tattooed on themselves, though. They’ll have us to show them what their tattoo is going to look like in the future. Hopefully one day blurred writing and unidentified blobs will be a thing of the past. Trouble is, not many people look that far ahead. I consider myself lucky that I escaped to my 30’s without getting one.
Yeah, but all us girls thought Jackie’s mom was the coolest. None of the other parents had tattoes!
OTOH, my grandmother’s neighbor had a butterfly tattoed on her arm while she was in Florida last year. A teenage girl and her friend came up to her on the beach, complimented her on the tattoo, and remarked, “See! This is what mine will look like in thirty years!” :rolleyes: As if.
Must be a thing. A woman I know got one recently to commemorate her fiftieth birthday.
:shrug: My great-aunt was pretty cool for many reasons, but none of them had anything to do with tattoos. She was very ashamed of it actually, and none of us knew about it until near the end of her life. (She had done it down at the dock as a dare with a girlfriend, who promptly chickened out of her end of the deal.)
Since the Frozen man from pre-history they pulled out of the alps has tattoo’s, I imagine the fad is still going to be going strong long after we are gone.
Tattooing is as old as humanity. It comes, it goes, it comes around again.
Sometimes it’s personal and spiritual and important, other times it’s a mullet wearing moron proclaiming to the world for all time that Winger is the best band evAR!
It’s mainstream right now. That will pass, but it’s here to stay, at least at some level.
For some odd reason much of the (western world|) seems to follow Americas trends. Boys here still want to flash their undies, like not being able to pull up your trou is some badge of honour.
The most unsettling trend is god bothering. Christianity seems to the lastest trend. While I enjoy watching Benny Hinn slap people to health and Creflo L Dollar harp on, I am deeply concerned about the the number of NZers I know who are “Christian”. It is like wackyland in my neighbourhood lately.
I prefer the status quo, religion is all just bonkers.
See, the really sad thing about this is that a tattoo, while a matter of taste (sometimes poor taste 
) usually does not physically harm the recipient if clean needles and proper procedures are followed.
Tooth grills however are in many cases meant to be permanent. They cannot be removed except by a dentist. When the recipient experiences enough pain that they go to have them inspected, they often find significant and permanent damage to the teeth has occurred.
Normally, permanent dental appliances are intended, for good reason, to mimic the natural environment as much as possible. These do exactly the opposite, they intentionally introduce significant alteration.
I absolutely agree with this.
And somehow I don’t think all the people who have gotten tattoos now will regret them as much as some of you think. A few will have regrets. We all have regrets about various things in our lives. But I expect most of them will either find them still relevant and important, or just a souvenir of an earlier time in their lives.
(I am tattoo-less, for what it’s worth.)
Most of the grills I see around here are fake removable ones. I worked with high schoolers doing their senior portraits, and how many pictures the grill stays in for was a subject of much heated mother-son debate in our waiting room.
As for tattoos, they’ve always been around. Humans will always want to ornament themselves. I doubt they’ll ever really go away.
Since this question has been asked every single year for decades (if not longer), my guess is no time soon.
Honestly. If someone is 70 and the biggest regret in their life is that they got a tattoo, I’d say they did pretty goddamn well for themselves.
I think you are right. I’ve had mine for 12 years or so and I don’t regret them a bit. And I still get compliments on them all of the time.
I think the anti-tattoo people want us to regret them, but all the tattooed people I know are happy with theirs year after year.
I doubt that anyone thinks that will be the biggest regret of their life. I haven’t seen anyone use that phrasing so far. Maybe if the thread title were “When will tattooed people realize that their tattoos are the biggest mistakes of their lives?”
I’d be willing to bet that no one in the history of the world has ever considered getting a tattoo to be the biggest mistake of their lives, unless perhaps they got an ill-advised one that pissed off a really angry gang with dangerous weaponry at the wrong time and place. I know that Terry Anderson, the longest-held captive in Lebanon, probably regretted his Marines tattoo when he was singled out for extra beatings because of it. But it was not the biggest mistake of his life.
Tattoos will certainly go out of style. Then those few people who got them because they were stylish will probably regret them. The truly deviant will always be proud of their tattoos.
When Tattoo-Removal-R-Us sets up shop, I will be happy to invest money in them. Tattoo removal should be a booming business for decades to come.