Yesterday I was seated with one of my clients inside a Starbucks. I don't ordinarily go to Starbucks except when it seems the best alternative for my clients, otherwise I prefer to support local coffee shops. Two women at the table behind me were talking about tattoos. One, who seemed maybe forty-ish was saying how she used to like tattoos when they were still considered edgy but now finds them to be boring and mainstream. The other, who might have been ten to fifteen years younger liked all tattoos and found some of them beautiful. I, of course, kept my mouth shut.
I heartily disapprove of tattoos. They are a waste of ink and money and, sometimes, good artistic talent. It isn`t that I think they are inherently bad or offensive. I don`t. But by the same token, given the beautiful divine artistry involved in making human skin, I can only imagine tattoos as a kind of graffiti, or vandalism.
When I was very young, only prisoners, soldiers and sailors. gang members, criminals and other losers got tattoos. And they were almost uniformly worn by men with the exception of certain butch lesbians and prostitutes. It all began to change in the eighties when almost every punk rocker seemed to have at least six tattoos each. Artists and musicians were getting them. They were edgy and redolent of rebel chic. It seemed rather like the process of neighbourhood gentrification. A rundown slum full of trailer trash folks attracts edgy artists and other creative outsiders and the vibe they generate attracts investment and redevelopment and young creative class types (creative in name only) pushing out the original inhabitants who can no longer afford to live there.
I am reminded here of a television commercial from BC Tel (Telus' forerunner for those who were born much later than I) from the early nineties. It featured a teenage goth chick phoning up her grandfather to complain bitterly about her intolerant, strict and overprotective mama. Her very kind and rather stodgy looking conservative grandpa listens with an indulgent smile on his face. Then he says to his edgy little granddaughter, "Let me tell you a thing or two about your mother." He goes on to describe his daughter's teenage rebellion and exploits with a biker gang during the sixties and then mentions the tattoo she got on some unmentionable part of her young body, and how this all turned his hair snowy-white. While his granddaughter is smirking and giggling on her end of the line, grandpa concludes with "Ask your mother to show you her tattoo."
It is true that tattoos have gone mainstream. Now everyone of every gender seems to be getting at least one. If you are under forty you are considered rather odd if you have virgin skin. I remember one woman who, some twelve years ago or so, asked me what I thought of her getting a tattoo, if it might be something that God might not approve of (we're both Christians). I replied that maybe God would be more concerned that the money she would be spending on self-adornment might go to a worthy destination, like maybe the food bank, or a shelter for battered women. I don't know if she ever got the tattoo or not since our friendship soon went south (I wonder why?)
I would never even think of getting a tattoo. I'm already an artist and I would really far rather decorate a canvas or a blank piece of paper than my own skin. I can also think of far better things to do with my money, like donate to the food bank or save for a vacation. And besides all that, I already have a personality.
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