Okay, here it is, I just plain don't like tattoos. Have at me.

CanuckAmok

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sat Jun-10-06 07:30 PM
Original message

Okay, here it is, I just plain don't like tattoos. Have at me.

Edited on Sat Jun-10-06 07:58 PM by CanuckAmok

Yup, sorry if anyone is offended by this (although I cannot see why anyone would be, because, really, what's my opinion compared to the resolve one must have to make a life-altering decision such as installing a permanent image of a porpoise leaping over one's belly-button?), but as a rule, I just don't like tattoos.

There. It's said.

But, that said, I agree that what one decides to permanently mark (notice I avoided the word "disfigure") one's body speaks of one's personality and values.

Therefore, if one voluntarily decides to make a statement by marking one's body in a place where I cannot avoid seeing it, I am going to judge that person based on my observations.

And, yes, that means that if I interview two job applicants with identical qualifications, and one exposes this:

and the other doesn't, as momentarily amused as I may be, I'm hiring the non-tattooed, or "sensible" person. Why? Because right or wrong, fair or not, I as an employer believe that the guy with Bart Simpson's prolapsed asshole etched into his flesh is going to steal office supplies.

Sue me. No judge in the world is going to side with anyone paying homage to a cartoon rectum in such a manner.

That's not to say I don't like people with tattoos. As long as I like the content of one's character as revealed by their words and deeds, I like them, squid-ink and all. Some, maybe most, of my friends are tattooed. The girl I'm dating has several tattoos, and I don't really mind (although I wish she had had the sense to put something on her lower back that could stand up to repeated reading). In fact, now being back in the dating pool after several years ensconced in boring-skinned marital obliviousness, I cannot help but meet women who are tattooed. I guess that old adage is true: “Tattoos: They’re not just for table-dancers anymore!”. Not that I have an unwarranted aversion to table dancers, mind you.

In fact, now is an ideal time to state that if you are, in fact, a tattooed table-dancer, I will still consider going out with you.

But I digress.

I don't dispute that it's a long-standing and occasionally beautiful art-form. Nor do I dispute that tattooing been around as long as mankind itself.

Yes, throughout the ancient world, the primitive people who unwittingly set-out the long road to modern civilization often employed techniques to permanently decorate their bodies with messages and symbols denoting their role in society, commemmorating events, and so-forth.

And here's why.

They didn't have paper. Or hunting licenses. Or a printing press. Or the internet.

Thanks to these wonders of technology, we can now communicate a message important enough to permanently insert under our skin to more people than just those few who are going to see us naked and up-close.

Hell, we can even express complex thoughts, for example asking directions to the Interstate, or telling someone there's a wasp on his sandwich. Both of these examples are poorly communicated in a strictly visual manner, and in the case of the wasp example, and to a lesser extent the Interstate example, a tattoo would be far too time-consuming an approach to communicating these ideas at all effectively.

And, ultimately, that's why Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church, instead of have them written in Germanic script on his ass.

And, that's why the Sistine Chapel isn't made out of decorated earlobes.

And, that's why the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, and most of the volumes of the world's great literature are committed to paper, and not on a vast library of Drive-Thru window attendants from an Iowa City McDonalds.

And that's why the Voyager spacecraft is right now hurtling through the cosmos with what its designers believed to be a universally symbolic explanation of its origins laser-etched into a metal-alloy plate, and not on Madonna's lower back.

Maybe I would be less condemning of this modern, pan-cultural, global-village fast-foodesque phenomenon if I didn't hear conversations like this on a regular basis...

(I have actually heard these conversations, on more than one occasion):

"I like your bunny. Did you design it?"

"No, it's the logo from the shampoo I use."

And...

"Hey, is that new?"

"Yeah, I just had it done... hurt like a mothafucka, but what do you think?"

"Cool. What made you decide on that one?"

"Oh, I dunno, I just liked it".

"I dunno". "I dunno."?!?! That's what made you decide between experiencing a few hours of searing pain and not experiencing hours of searing pain? Come over here, so I can hit you on the back of the head with a shovel. Why would I do that? “I dunno.”

Or how about this one...

"Hey, what's that on your lower back?"

"Oh? Which one?"

"The one that looks like a cross with a loop at the top."

"That's an 'Ankh'."

"Ah, so that's what an Ankh looks like. What does it symbolise?"

"It's the Greek symbol for good luck, or prosperity, or somethin'."

Or this one:

"Hey look, I finally got my Seltic (sic) knot done!"

You see, there should be some sort of an exam system in place to protect the credibility of the art-form. So, if you don't know that an Ankh is the Ancient Egyptian symbol of "life", not the Greek symbol of prosperity (or somethin’), you can't have one.

And if you pronounce "Celtic" with an "s" sound at the beginning, rather than with the correct "k" sound, you can't have a Celtic knot.

This type of screening could be put in place today and with very little cost, if the tattoo industry would just admit there's a problem with perpetuating this kind of ignorance.

Lastly, and this is where I’m really going to “draw” some ire…

If one is going to endure the searching, the decision-making, the physical effort and the discomfort/pain of getting a tattoo, one should at least have something original in mind.

Here are examples of tattoos which have been done (with varying degrees of artistry) to the point that they should be retired, just like the jersey of a beloved but rheumatic all-star player:

A dolphin jumping over your navel.

A “S”eltic knot.

Corporate logos unless being well-paid for it, and even then only fiscally, environmentally and labour conscientious companies.

A barbed-wire armband.

Anything “4Life”. You cannot with any certainty claim that in twenty years you’re still going to believe in “X-Box4Life”.

Garfield. (former-president or cat).

Cherries.

A flaming skull-man with dice for eyes, wearing a canted top-hat, driving an all-chrome, ersatz Big-Daddy-Roth-esque hotrod belching thick white smoke, his shiny tongue flapping in the wind as he manipulates the 8-ball stick-shift and terrorizes a pack of Girl Guides.

Suggestive traffic-signs. "Slippery When Wet" in particular.

Butterflies.

Runes, unless you can substantiate a claim of Druid ancestry.

A rose, anywhere.

Dice.

If you’re going to subject everyone who comes into visual contact with your body art with imagery you’ve chosen, please, at least acknowledge that some part of your decision to have a tattoo is based on wanting to draw the attention of others to whatever image you have chosen, and that you have some sort of societal obligation to entertain, if not challenge, we spectators. I mean, I don’t walk up to you and insist that you study closely my undecorated fore-arm, do I?

Sure, you could argue that you didn't get a tattoo to impress other people, but I can counter:

1) Then why didn't you get it done inside, like on your liver, where it won't be damaged by the sun and stuff?, and

2) I didn't walk down to the town square, pour gasoline all over my body and calmly immolate myself in protest of the Vietnam War to impress you.

Getting the same tattoo as everyone else is just like every graffito-tagger around the globe not only using the same Bronx Wild-style font, but only ever writing “Go Gomez”, or “Scottsdale Rules O.K.”. It just should not happen.

There. That’s the end of my tirade. Nothing personal. I’m close-minded about so few things, I insist on retaining this one vestigial remnant of my curmudgeonly birthright.

Goodnight, and Good luck.