Quote:
Originally Posted by svandamme
Nobody has ever gotten prettier from a tattoo.
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I live in a beach town that's also home to a university and I see LOTS of people with tattoos every day. They're mostly younger (20s-30s) but ever since tattooing went mainstream, I'm also seeing a fair number of older folks (50s-60s) sporting fresh ink as well. While not trying to be too judgemental or critical, I'm having a hard time understanding this newfound fascination with tattoos. Why exactly are so many people sporting skin art these days? Is it simply just to follow the herd? I do realize that tattooing has been around forever and that the practice has always had it's ardent devotees. Until about ten years ago, a relatively small number of people got tattooed to stand out from the crowd and display their work as an art form. Now, if you have tattoos, you
are the crowd and even middle-aged housewives are hopping on the bandwagon and getting inked. It's not just for the fringe element any more and both TV and print advertising have been showing more & more models with tattoos lately as well.
Do people with tattoos ever look at somebody else's work and think,
"Man, that looks like crap". Or, does just having some ink, anything at all, admit you to the 'club' and nobody really judges the merits of your work?
I've started paying closer attention to what people choose to permanently display on themselves and just have to wonder why they picked those particular images in the first place. Why would a guy tattoo a chainsaw on his calf, or a woman do some vines and flowers all down her arms and across her shoulders, or why a guy would want a bloody skull & dagger inked on his neck? And then there's some who maybe can't decide on an image, so they simply cover parts of themselves with swirls or patterns. I can understand that some people actually like chainsaws, flowers, or even bloody skulls...but why not just print these things on a T-shirt instead? What is it about permanently displaying these mostly-uninspiring images on one's body? Sometimes I liken major upper-body ink to buying some wild-looking shirt, then wearing it every single day for the rest of your life.
Would a person interested in getting tattooed be as inclined to hand some stranger a can of spray paint and have them draw all over their car as they are to have their skin used as a permanent canvas for displaying someone else's artwork?