Let’s talk about tattoos – or more, the recent trend towards total skin coverage with tattoos, and the increasing number of piercings some people are getting.
Chatting with a friend recently about tattoos really opened my eyes – she was talking about the body and skin modification trends these days, and whilst I have no problems with anyone getting any ink or anyone deciding to get pierced, I just have to say – please really think about it!
When I was in my 20’s I had a few tattoos. I picked them off a chart, on a wall, in the tattooist. No prior consideration was taken, and I didn’t have any design input. It was like ordering a Chinese meal! I’ll have a #36 and a #88 please. Indeed I even when to Staples (stationers in the UK at the time) to photocopy the pictures onto transparency film.
At around the same time I was pierced for the first time. Using the gun. Two in each ear, one at the top of my left ear. Using the gun. It split the cartilage and became infected very quickly. I had to have the piercing removed by a nurse (dug out) as it had become entrapped.
And this is my big problem…
Fashions come and go, and with the advent of Peaky Blinders and the Hollywood set getting themselves adorned with ink and metal, the masses are following – but the problem is that fashion’s change.
I see so many people wearing pictures of clocks on their arm, or geometric patterns; and fuck I was one of them! I got a Celtic tattoo or three done, and then twenty years later regretted them.
They have no meaning to me. I didn’t choose them to relate to an event. I just chose them because it was what you did at the time.
If you’re going to get yourself permanently marked, make it relevant! Make it about you! A friend has a beardo emoji, tiny, but relevant. Don’t get tattoos because you think they make you look cool, or hard, to others. If everyone had tattoos the uninked would be the unusual ones. Get my drift?
My new Zelda tattoo has three games referenced in it; Twilight Princess, Jet Set Willy and Yars Revenge. I still play the 40 year old Yars Revenge to this day.
Don’t be younger me, and never ever get a tattoo of a cross and a crucible because it does look like a fucking anchor from a distance, no matter how much cool rubber you’re wearing!
Very true. A colleague of mine didn’t have any untill she had her parents fingerprints tattooed in the shape of a heart. Maybe a bit much, but it’s of great significance for her. I will stay with the uninked masses and use the ink on paper instead.
amazing shiny friend
That’s a shame you went through that. I never got a tattoo because the Department of Defense considered it a character flaw which they considered to be dangerous around nuclear weapons. They considered you a security risk and you could not get a Top Secret security clearance. I needed the security clearance to do my job and be around nuclear missile submarines.