Waste Of Ink

I don't think I have written about this yet on my blog.  This is about tattoos.  That's right: tramp stamps, as they used to be called on women.  Or three dimensional tags.  I see tattoos as graffiti.  But graffiti can be easily washed off or painted over.  The process of getting rid of a tattoo is expensive, difficult and not very pleasant. 

Am I generally against tattoos?  Yes.  Do I think people should stop getting them?  I would be delighted. Am I going to do anything to stop them?  Waste of time.  They're going to do it anyway and there is no cure for stupidity, especially in the young and immature.

I must sound like quite the grumpy old fart.  Except for one thing.  I have never liked or been in favour of tattoos.  To me human skin is already beautiful.  It is not canvas.  It is there to protect our bodies.  If you need to tag your beautiful young skin with ink graffiti because you don't have a personality, don't know who you are, or simply want to emulate your favourite bad ass rock star then I would say you have a lot of growing to do.

The medium is the message.  A design that would look beautiful on paper or canvas suddenly becomes sinister, gross and ugly on human skin.  It is a way of defacing yourself.  To me, if you are wearing a tattoo then you are telling me that you hate yourself.  If you are wearing a whole sleeve of tattoos on one arm you should seek professional help.  If you have both arms covered in sleeve tattoos, just stay out of Belgium because you might be so far gone that you would perfectly qualify for their voluntary euthanasia laws.  Or maybe Belgium is just where you ought to be and don't forget to have a mouthful of chocolate before you die.

Tattoos really came into vogue in the late eighties and early nineties.  Before that they were as I previously mentioned tramp stamps.  Symbols of jailhouse, army and street crime.  They were not considered nice or beautiful.  A tattoo was called the devil's mark, a permanent indication that you hate society, that you will do what ever the F-You-See-K you want and the hell with everyone else.

But bad ass has gone mainstream.  It went mainstream a long time ago, which is to say that it is no longer bad ass, just as cool is no longer cool because everyone now is cool.  I should add that I have met some very fine people who also happen to wear tattoos.  I still think they're idiots.  But despite being idiots they are also lovely people.  But such is our human nature.  I am also considered by many (well, okay, by some...  A few?  One or two, maybe.  Okay, my mom, she thinks I'm nice when she's not pissed off at me, but she's been dead for a while and you can read more about her and my dad in yesterday's post)  to be a lovely person despite my tendency of making snarky remarks and writing biting posts about human foibles.

But you know the worst thing about tattoos?  They age horribly. As you get old and your skin gets old your lovely bad ass ink is going to age with you and it is not going to look pretty.  It is going to lose its colour, its form and by the time you are seventy (if you have survived your youthful overindulgences) they will be ugly black and gray smears on your skin.  I have guessed that with twenty-five percent of people younger than forty-five getting themselves inked, in another fifty years or so our nursing homes are not going to be a pretty site.