I have the grim realisation that this is going to make me sound like an old fogey, but here goes. Why does roughly 97% of the population (of the UK, but it applies elsewhere) feel the need to cover themselves in tattoos? My view - which you've probably guessed - is that these thing look bad enough when they are new, but in a few years time when they have all faded and skin has stretched, they are going to look a whole heap worse. I just don't see the point and I have never felt the vaguest inclination to have anything gouged into my skin. I had ear piercings when I was young, but there comes a time when you say, "no, that looks a bit naff now, time to get rid of studs/earrings." With a tattoo, that is not an option unless you want to go through a lot of serious pain. Maybe that's it. Perhaps I have discovered the money-making market of the future. Time to train as a tattoo remover!
I got some tattoos when I was sixteen and seventeen, and they weren't even professionally done. I have regretted it since I was about twenty-one or before, and spent much of my life wearing long-sleeve shirts where short-sleeves might have been more comfortable. Apart from the pain of tattoo removal, there is a considerable expense involved. Finally, I had the most obnoxious one covered by, of all things, a tattoo of a bandaid, since the idea was that it was covering something up. I couldn't afford removals.
Ken, the band-aid cracked me up! That is pure genius! I just loathe tattoos! I can't help it! Unless you are in the military, I just don't get the appeal. One reason I hate them is because people almost always have buyer's remorse some years down the road. I saw a woman in Walmart one day, about my age. She was about 130 lbs., but looked like she had been really heavy at one time She was wearing a low tank top, and you could see what was once a tattoo, dripping down her armpit when she reached up to get something! I had no idea what the damned thing was supposed to be, maybe at one time, a snake or something, winding down her side. I thanked God, right then and there, that I had never given in to pressure from my friends to get a tattoo! My apologies to all you "illustrated" people out there.
I have never understood why people would get a tattoo. I have seen people with so many on them they looked like a pattern on a shirt instead of skin.
Pat, that is so true! I saw another woman, at Wally-World, of course, who had both arms covered with dark tattoos. At first glance, I thought she had dirt all over her arms! There was NO skin showing at all! It just looked really odd.
In my youth I knew many a seaman who insisted they had to have a tattoo. Why you would ever want Naval patrol or Making Bacon tattooed on your torso is still a mystery to me.
I wonder how these people covered in tattoos get a job. If I was in a position of hiring people for a business I wouldn't consider hiring anyone with visible tattoos, no matter how good their resume was. The tattoos themselves are proof that person makes bad decisions.
The whole tattoo craze seems to have gone off the scale. Even relatively few years ago, the majority of people with a tattoo were either Navy or ex-Navy types. Every summer, the town in which I live has a fair which lasts for about three months. One Sunday, I was wandering around with my partner and we came to the conclusion that we were the only people outdoors that day who were tattoo-free. I don't, by the way, want to give the impression that I have an obsession here. It's more bewilderment than anything else.
When I was in the Navy, late 60's to mid 70's, I never got a tattoo. I tell people "I just never got drunk enough". About a year before meeting my wife, I gave it some thought about getting an eagle tattoo put on each of my arms, between my elbow and hand. I didn't end up doing it and I'm SO glad, because my wife doesn't like them (or body piercings). Some tattoos can really look cool, while others appear that the person has spent time in prison or a gang. In fact, there is a tv show that portrays prison life and there are a lot of tattoos on those people. People with tattoos don't want to be compared to those people in/out of prison or the gangs that have them, but fact-is-fact, some of those folks sure do look like them. Sorry, just my viewpoint. BTW, Wal Mart has absolutely no problem hiring people with all kinds of tattoos.
I can't say I'm the biggest fan of Walmart, but I'll give them credit where it's due. While I personally don't like tattoos, I'd never discriminate against somebody because of their appearance. I used to work alongside a chap that had a "hairstyle" that was sheer hell to look at - a mullet straight out of a 1980s AOR band - but he was good at his job and a perfectly personable type of fellow.
I guess this is my issue with Tattoos, I see individuals who are young who have so many of them. All I can think is how will they feel about these when they get older. I remember my father who had a few tattoos saying that he wished he hadn't had them done when he was younger. What he had done was mild compared to some of the stuff I am seeing these days. I just think people should look at the bigger picture before having a tattoo done and that includes how these will look when they get older.
There's tattooing of your eyes for an eyeliner. I've seen it and it looks nice and it doesn't seem like a tattoo at all. I don't go for body tattooing though because it's just seems too painful to do. It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some consider tattooing to be art. Guess it's a personal choice that people decide to do with their own bodies to have tattoos or not. The eyeliner tattoo is great and all it needs is a yearly touch up. I'd like to maybe one day have the eyeliner tattoo, if it's affordable, but nothing else.
When I was kid my parents used to warn me about people wearing tatoos "if they are not sailors, tattoos mean they have been in prison." So when I turned into a teenager and my mom discovered a friend of mine had an ink-made tattoo in an arm (that himself made with a regular pen) she came with the sermon of the prisoners. She knew my friend wasn't nor ever was, but she said it was the same; if someone wears tattoos may look like convicted just realized from jail. Overtime tattoos became trendy, and some might be considered artwork, but to me someone who wears tattoos if not really an ex-convict, it's simply a person in a questionable social-status I wouldn't like to be linked to. While tattooed persons are now "protected" by anti-discrimination laws, there are still a large number of "serious" companies that would not hire to someone wearing tattoos, piercing and other elements that are common in criminals, no matter if the candidates aren't really. Aesthetic tattoo for beautify purposes, like eyeliner, is probably the only exception to the rule, and is not really a way to link it with the common approach that many people still have; prisoner or sailor? LOL
Pardon me for this comment but I am not for the tattoo. I find it gross to see a half-naked guy walking around as if bandying the tattoo on his body. When we went to Singapore last year, there was this guy in the immigration line in the airport with a tattoo all over his face. He is white but we don't know his nationality. My husband was thinking of taking a selfie with the guy but I advised against it because he didn't look friendly. And there was even a ring in his nose and a wooden plate on his left ear lobe. Gross, really. There was this young actress named Claudine who fell in love with Mark, also an actor. When they broke up, she endured the ordeal of erasing the tattoo on her leg, the name of her boyfriend. I sure wish that had taught her a lesson that a tattoo is a permanent mark and the skin cannot be restored to its original complexion anymore.