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When Will This Fad End?
This topic has been bouncing around my head for a while, but I’ve never gotten around to writing it. Someone on Ricochet will mention something, Jay Nordlinger months ago on a podcast complained about tattoos or a user whose name I forget recently said he was up for a good tattoo rant. Other times I see someone and think why?
I noticed markings on Dana Loesch’s arm in a Parkland CNN screenshot or a cross on a pastor’s back at a church swim party. Tattoos seem to be everywhere and there is no demographic that is exempt. This will come across as a get-off-my-lawn rant, but here we go.
I guess I’m a Generation X person. I still remember that about the only people who had tattoos were military veterans or criminals and they might only have one or two, no sleeves or multiple ones covering a lot of the body. Others might have had them, but they were in a private location. Maybe it was just where I grew up.
Some point along the way, tattoos became more mainstream. In the ’90s a lot of girls were getting lower back tattoos, but they were derided as “tramp stamps”. Then it seemed as though they exploded on the scene and everyone had one. Yes it’s me, but I have yet to see a tattoo that improves a woman’s appearance. As G. Gordon Liddy used to say, putting a tattoo on a woman is like putting a bumper sticker on a BMW. I will be glad when I don’t see ink everywhere I look.
Maybe things are changing. I saw this on Twitter. I don’t know what drove it, but we might be on the downward side of the trend. I can hope.
We have reached full mainstream tattoo saturation, it is now far edgier to not have tattoos. So it flipped on me and now I’m the dork. Crap.
— Chris Loesch (@ChrisLoesch) May 30, 2018
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Published in Culture
Plus, I don’t recall ever seeing a circumcised penis displayed in public.
pfft… conformist
http://southpark.cc.com/clips/154495/goth-served
To sum up for me:
Get one if you want one.
The vast majority are neither as attractive nor as cool as their owners think, but are just ink.
The principle objection is not their offensiveness but their conformity–their faddish nature (to quote the O/P).
That’s a pretty broad condemnation to make of this discussion. As I mentioned before, tattoos are permanent (yes, yes, they can be removed, but not easily. This is not an item of clothing.), and so it certainly is an interesting phenomenon. Why so many now? Why are so many women getting them as a form of decoration, when they don’t add anything to a person’s appearance and a good case can be made that they detract? Someone here gave stats showing that they are a negative for would–be employers – so why get them? It’s true, I don’t like them outside of the military, but surely there are some cultural ramifications and possibly cultural indicators worth looking at here? Where’s the navel-gazing?
No one goes out the way they came in.
Makeup and hair coloring aren’t usually permanent.
That simply doesn’t make sense. I find tattoos to be ugly and off-putting, especially on women. That has been, and always will be, my attitude whether or not they are popular or unpopular. Me not getting a tattoo is independent of their popularity, and thus it’s hardly following a fad.
If being “rebellious” is considered a good in and of itself (personally, I think it depends on what is being rebelled against, and how), then the idea that the most rebellious thing one can do would be to wear tempory tattoos shows how cheap and pathetic rebellion has become for people. I’m not impressed.
Yea, not really. Since the advent of accessable running water and germ theory it’s not really a issue. Additionally the botches have huge negative health out comes.
Honestly, I don’t know exactly how they are applied. I don’t like the artificialness of it. And whether you call them overlays or pasties, there’s obviously some sort of adhesive applied.
And your statement about designs “often” handpainted, probably means that they “often” are not.
I’m so boring I never even got my ears pierced. But I admit to an attraction to bad boys who have them. I think it’s the “My dad would never approve” factor, not sure. But there are tattoos that make the wearer look silly.
And sometimes a tattoo can announce that we are an idiot.
In your humble opinion! Do you somehow believe that women are getting tat’s because they think they make them uglier? Or that if young men shunned and disregarded tattooed girls, that they would do it anyway?
I understand, to some of us with older eyes and old fashioned worldviews, they are shocking and not attractive. I’m here to tell you- to younger men and women they are quite attractive. They like them, they respect them, they find them bold and independent and a form of self expression. And yes, the permanent nature of them is a big part of it. They show dedication to their self image and to the admittedly youthful compulsion to demand “I will always feel this way, be this way, think this way. I won’t ever get so old that I look at people with tattoos and think they are foolish or ugly. I will never become my parents! “
I’m not a young man, but I remember feeling that way when I was in my early adult years. Don’t you?
Well, that’s not a fact. Whether something is a fad or not is a matter of opinon. Nor is choosing to not tattoo your body a fad. (Just an opinion). I doubt that a majority of our culture has ever had tattoos applied, even now (a hypothesis that’s probably a fact).
At that one my hind brain does not say “just, no.” It says “run away!” It is the words that elevate that tattoo from Amber to Flashing Red. Vegans are bat[CoC] crazy.
Helpful warning signal, that. Like those bright red mushrooms that signal ‘poison!’
The nose ring bothers me more than the tattoo does. I suppose the nose ring can be taken out, and is therefore not permanent. But still: the tattoo is weird, the nose ring is downright ugly. Why do pretty women do this to themselves?
I don’t have a dog in this hunt, and am not bitter that I was circumcised as an infant but hygiene for the uncircumcised can be taught. I do consider it a minor disfigurement.
I’d say that if there are no relgious reasons for it, don’t inflict it on your son.
Exactly. It might save a lot of time before getting to “So, would you like to go out to dinner sometime?”
I think that tattoos are attractive to people who lack other forms of stability or permanence in their lives, so tattoos are a warning to the viewer.
I am entirely turned off by tattoos. Part of my revulsion is founded in my faith, part is my sense that tattoos are extremely low class.
It depends. If someone is getting something modest, something on her ankle, that seems harmless enough. The moderation in all things rule applies here.
Whether male or female, someone who covers their body with tats is probably in love with the needle, and has other demons they’re fighting to go along with it.
In my not so humble opinion.
That’s the dumbest of all.
Could you explain this being “in love with the needle”? It sounds similar to people who self harm. I just can’t fathom being in love with a needle.
We had a server a few weeks ago who had so many piercings I couldn’t look at her because it made me queasy.
Pain causes the brain to release endorphins, thus it is possible to get addicted to doing things that cause pain in order to get those endorphins. A “runners high” is the same thing, though long distance running is a far more healthy and socially acceptable way of getting high off your own pain.
So a lot of this a subjective taste. Which I won’t argue as inherently wrong. I mean you are entitled to like what you like. But the idea that becuase one has a particular vision of what is a norm and deviation from that is ugly, primitive or a sign of cultural decline, is just another form self indulgence. The “The well I like it this way/or that’s different thus wrong.” Its pretty weak sauce.
Also, the notion of it being primitive is a loaded statement and one shouldn’t throw it around lightly. Primitive is useing stone hand tools or believing in a god. (Ahhh see what I did there? So clever.)
The idea of how it effects employment. Thats fundmentally perception problem, and how people currently view tattoos, give it 20 years I bet it will be a non issue. I mean 30 years ago if one was to openly identify as a homosexual that would certainly hurt their chances of employment. Even though its has nothing to with the actual job.
Which makes you exactly the kind of person they are trying to repel… Judgemental, closed minded, and full of a sense of superiority. Please don’t think I’m insulting you, I’m just pointing out that you have just clearly stated that if someone makes a personal choice you don’t agree with, you prejudge them to be ‘extremely low class’. You are free to have that opinion, but can you see that many people find that snap judgement of a person to be just as revolting?
I grew up in the late ’60’s. I had long hair. That was immediately judged by many to be a sign of low class, of instability, everything you describe above. Some even assumed it was a sign of homosexuality. I was a ‘dirty hippy freak’ to many people, and plenty said so to my face.
What I learned was that my hair also weeded out many of those who would judge others on superficial outward appearances. And I considered that to be a benefit. That didn’t mean I threw them on the junk heap, but it sure gave me a clue who they were. Not because of some aspect of how they looked, but because of an insight in to their personality and mind.
Let me just advise you that the person you reject based upon their having some ink may well be one of the best, most decent people you would ever know. But you won’t know them, because you judged and rejected them based on a superficial appearance attribute.
No. I thought stupid rebellious fads were stupid rebellious fads (being the youngest of six meant that I watched my older siblings do stupid rebellious things, and thus came to the conclusion that rebellion for rebellion’s sake was foolish.), and that conformity posing as noncomformity was pretty thin gruel.
My late stepfather was a psychiatrist in the ’50s and ’60s; he did forensic examinations on people in the criminal justice system and consulted on patients in the state prisons. I remember him saying that one or two tattoos… you got drunk when you were young and dumb. More than that suggested psychopathology and/or being a career criminal.
Final answer: To protect themselves from guys like me?
I ran 2 marathons (fyi: there will not be a 3rd) and do not believe that ‘runners high’ is from pain. I think it is from teaching ones mind to overcome and become (almost completely) oblivious to the physical assertion of running.
BTW: Pain is a good thing. That is why God gave us pain. A doctor once advised me not to ‘kill’ the nerves that were causing me some pretty annoying pain.
Except most people want a good paying job today, not 20 years from today. Just sayen’ dude.