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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
Just getting back to this……why does the method of applying the design matter?
Should we ever meet IRL, I shall invite you on a research trip to my favorite local nail salon. ;-)
To me, tattoos just look like a way to hide a skin disease. Don’t touch me you dirty tattooed people.
And we would need that protection because?… :-)
Wisdom, Sñr. Caballero…
More wisdom, Sñr. Caballero…
I’m not anti-tattoo. I just think they’re silly. Unfortunately, I think the same about most of those who get them.
Nanda, is that a serious question, or are you joking? :)
No.
I rebelled against my parent’s expectations by getting married at 18 and staying married for the next almost 16 years while picking up two bachelor’s and a law degree. So yeah, embracing the same “I’m sticking [it] to the man!” attitude that kids have been doing for the last 50 years (yes, the British invasion was really that long ago) never really appealed to me.
I think that’s why it’s aesthetically appealing. It makes cultural sense.
The :-) usually connotes teasing of a gentle sort, where ST is concerned, JaC; however, I’m intrigued by how he might reply, just a little…
Aha – that’s how we can kill the tattoo trend – label it as cultural appropriation.
No one has mentioned the extent to which professional athletes are covered in ink. Have they been following the trend or are they partially responsible for it.
I can’t think of anything I’d want permanently inscribed on my skin. I have a feeling for people with ink the permanence is a feature, not a bug.
Months ago my son told me about his new girlfriend. They were becoming serious and my husband and I hadn’t met her yet. She had been previously married. Ok. She had a young son. Ok. She goes to church. Ok. She has several tattoos. At which point my son said, Mom, I told her it wouldn’t be a problem for you. And it hasn’t been. Her ink (and she has lots of it) is of the flowery variety. Her sleeve is well designed and each part has a particular significance that is meaningful to her. Again, I would never choose to decorate my skin that way. But she has chosen to and it doesn’t mean she is low class, lacking imagination, suffering from low self-esteem, or “in love with the needle.”
Gotta say, this thread seems kinda judge-y.
Or Anthony Weiner.
Maybe they shopped their novel around and then decided to self-publish.
As I may’ve mentioned here before, I have a younger sister. She has several life-event reminders in ink. As do all of her adult children – to a greater or lesser degree. I love them, even if I’d rather they weren’t walking art galleries.
I believe that an asymmetrical oriental scrollish tattoo on a woman’s back that takes into account her body as a whole – including where arms normally go and a sort of balance of figure to ground – could be a work of art.
It’s a matter of the tattoo artist actually being an artist. And not a tagger, or one of those ‘and-the-kitchen-sink muralists.
“In my day when we wanted to mess up our septums we just did lines of coke.
I don’t think ‘just as likely’ is accurate.
“…the average person sees between 90,000 and 42.5 million faces in their lifetime.” Really judge? Nah. Judge well enough in relation to the time and effort it would take to delve deeply into the hearts and souls of every [redact]hole on the street? Absolutely.
me neither
This might be the post that has my spouse joining ricochet. Goddess bless, but he hates tattoos.
I suppose it is possible that the ubiquity of images online and the ease of printing them out has drained a lot of the value out paintings and photographs such that permanent and irreproducible ink gains value by comparison.
Do you mean ‘sticking to the man’ or ‘sticking it to the man’?
It is judge-y. I mean, what else is this? But that is what becoming an elder is about, perhaps.
I can remember my mom calling out both my first husband and me over his long hair. I couldn’t understand her disapproval. He did his time in the service; he got great grades in college. He made decent money. But all she focused on was the hair that came creeping down past his collar.
My response to her insanity was quite clear cut. “Never. I will never be like that.” And of course if today’s “kids” only had guys with long hair I’d be okay with it. But each generation has to out-radicalize the prior generations. I think it is part of their job description.
A salty sea-dog Chief once admonished a group of us young squids not to get tattoos:
“You know, this whole Navy thing might not work out for you, and if take up a life of crime instead, you don’t want any identifying features.”
Read and heed.
What’s the similarity between Mormons and African refugees?
They don’t curse and they don’t have tattoos.
It just makes cool images more accessible, IMO. If you want to see something cool, then go online and browse away. Don’t go too deep, though, because porn is always a few clicks away. It’s the new Kevin Bacon game, except there’s breasts at the end of the game instead of Kevin Bacon.
When the economy thrives again, we will see a drop off in tattoos. The rise of tattoos has corresponded with the collapse of hope. People think they won’t ever have a meaningful future so they don’t feel a need to look hireable.
I’m not saying that all people that have tattoos are hopeless ne’er-do-wells, but that is where the fad started and grew. Then there were so many people out of work and believing they would never have a good career, that it jumped from the goth/meth junkie crowds, to the generic unemployable crowd and then to mainstream when the unemployable crowd became main stream.
We will need a generation of prosperity for this fad to ebb away again. I compare it to the growth of beards during and after the War Between the States. Presidents stopped wearing beards when they stopped being veterans of that war.