There used to be a saying among young men when I was younger, Ah the girls in their summer dresses. Today it's, Ah the girls in their summer dresses -- and tattoos. Whether they are being macho or making a fashion statement or both or neither, I have no idea, but they were out in force yesterday at the street fair. Far more interesting to me, however, was a woman, approaching middle age, who was in the process of eight painful and expensive procedures to remove a large tattoo from her back. She's not the first person of either sex to regret the decisions of youth. Former sailors who regret their weekend-in-port tattoos are everywhere, and my dad was one of them. I grew up hearing, "Getting tattoos is the stupidest thing I ever did."
Why isn't there a growing industry in temporary tattoos, something youth can embrace and get off later? Whether decals, or artists painting on your skin, surely these would be more practical.
Generally tattoos do nothing for me but there are exceptions. Hitch-hiking across country as a teenager, I encountered a toothless woman as covered in tattoos as the Illustrated Man, my first encounter with such rugged individualism, and I admired it. But I don't respond to fashion statements of any kind. After all, "fashion is the first refuge of a scoundrel," as Dr. Avis used to say.
But as another friend, Phil, used to say, "Whatever turns you on ..." That's the bottom line.
1 comment:
There are temporary tattoos -- for example hena tattoos -- but the reason , I think, they are not as big as you expect is that they are too temporary. People don't want tattoos that will go away in a week or two. Those tattoos make folks feel fickle. When they get a tattoo they do it for the lifetime. It's just that at some point they stop believing in that. A lot of my friends who have been drawn on compare it with marriage.
I think someone should create a method making tattoos permanent but easily (and painlessly) removable. That would be a profitable industry .
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