Thinky Thoughts - Tattoos
So tattoos are one of those weird things that have undergone a huge cultural shift within my lifetime. And I'm frequently reminded that my attitudes haven't exactly kept up with the times. When I was a kid, the only people who had tattoos were sailors and bikers and sideshow attractions. They weren’t something that “nice” people did (meaning upwardly mobile white middle-class people like my family). And somewhere along the way that changed. Tattoos became part of teenage rebellion. Rock stars and rap stars and highly paid athletes started sporting ink. I still remember the first time I saw a tattoo on a girl in a Playboy spread, how shocking it was that tattoos had become so common (or popular?) that Hugh Hefner now allowed them on his models. (It was a small red hot chile pepper...) My sister dated a tattoo artist when she was in college, and has a discrete red heart at the nape of her neck where you can only see it when she wears her hair up.
I’ve seen really good tattoos. Notably a gorgeous blue rose on a cashier at Seven-Eleven that I was told was homemade, done with ink from a Bic pen. And I’ve seen horrible tattoos, like the ugly, uneven “Drunk again” over a whiskey bottle on the arm of a co-worker when I worked in a factory. That’s one that would be worth paying the money to have removed.
Despite years of tattoo popularity and many, many tattooed friends (including the maid of honor at my wedding), I’m still not really comfortable with people being tattooed. For a long time I thought it was because only outlaws had tattoos when I was a kid, and I still hadn't been able to train that value judgment out of my brain. But I realized recently that that’s not what makes me feel uncomfortable when I see people with full sleeve of tattoos or other massive body art. It’s something else.
[One tattoo looks like this to me]
One tattoo looks like this to me:
One tattoo is simple. It’s a focal point for your eye. You’re saying here, here is one really beautiful image, one really important thing, that I want you to look at. You’ve clearly put some thought into the art that you’ve put on your skin, and selected one meaningful thing to etch on yourself permanently.
Unfortunately, most people can’t stop at one tattoo. The minute they get the first one, they’re talking about how they can’t wait to get another. And it’s the second tattoo where your love for your tattoos and I part ways.
[But get a second tattoo, and this is what I see]
But get a second tattoo, and this is what I see:
More than one tattoo looks cluttered to me. Especially when they’re on the same body part. The more art you've put on your body, the less comfortable I am with it. Once the images start to run together, my eye cannot tell what it’s supposed to look at in the jumbled mess of multiple tattoos.
The message a tattoo sleeve sends to me is, I like a lot of stuff, but can’t make up my mind, so I’ll just throw it all in here. Whether any of it looks good together doesn’t matter, what matters is that I have a lot of things I like, and I can’t choose, so ALL THE THINGS.
I’ll give you one guess which design aesthetic is more appealing to me when it comes to skin art.
(And if you have a bunch of tattoos, I still love you. I just may not be able to fully appreciate your skin art is all...)
I’ve seen really good tattoos. Notably a gorgeous blue rose on a cashier at Seven-Eleven that I was told was homemade, done with ink from a Bic pen. And I’ve seen horrible tattoos, like the ugly, uneven “Drunk again” over a whiskey bottle on the arm of a co-worker when I worked in a factory. That’s one that would be worth paying the money to have removed.
Despite years of tattoo popularity and many, many tattooed friends (including the maid of honor at my wedding), I’m still not really comfortable with people being tattooed. For a long time I thought it was because only outlaws had tattoos when I was a kid, and I still hadn't been able to train that value judgment out of my brain. But I realized recently that that’s not what makes me feel uncomfortable when I see people with full sleeve of tattoos or other massive body art. It’s something else.
[One tattoo looks like this to me]
One tattoo looks like this to me:
One tattoo is simple. It’s a focal point for your eye. You’re saying here, here is one really beautiful image, one really important thing, that I want you to look at. You’ve clearly put some thought into the art that you’ve put on your skin, and selected one meaningful thing to etch on yourself permanently.
Unfortunately, most people can’t stop at one tattoo. The minute they get the first one, they’re talking about how they can’t wait to get another. And it’s the second tattoo where your love for your tattoos and I part ways.
[But get a second tattoo, and this is what I see]
But get a second tattoo, and this is what I see:
More than one tattoo looks cluttered to me. Especially when they’re on the same body part. The more art you've put on your body, the less comfortable I am with it. Once the images start to run together, my eye cannot tell what it’s supposed to look at in the jumbled mess of multiple tattoos.
The message a tattoo sleeve sends to me is, I like a lot of stuff, but can’t make up my mind, so I’ll just throw it all in here. Whether any of it looks good together doesn’t matter, what matters is that I have a lot of things I like, and I can’t choose, so ALL THE THINGS.
I’ll give you one guess which design aesthetic is more appealing to me when it comes to skin art.
(And if you have a bunch of tattoos, I still love you. I just may not be able to fully appreciate your skin art is all...)