Can someone please explain to me the rage with tattoos today?
It hasn't been long since I was a kid, it really hasn't, and back then it seemed like only bikers, hippies and just weirdos were the only ones who really got tattoos. Now, it seems to be the women first. I mean like, all of them. This isn't some "I haven't been enlightened" or "I haven't opened my mind" thing either. It just strikes me as odd that at a certain point someone feels the need to have something drawn onto their body...and then again and again.
A few years ago in high school we had this blog project to do where we had to make a blog with a certain theme (yeah, it was nothing like this blog...this one's a lot better), and someone's was a blog about tattoos. I remember she talked to someone who had a lot of them in one entry and said this of her "...has turned her body into a living work of art!" I swear that's a plot point in a movie somewhere...that some villain is trying to turn people into living works of art. It's definitely somewhere out there, and if it isn't then it should be. It gets worse when I actually picture this. A work of art? What will they do, skin you and hang it in a museum? Macabre man, macabre.
That's the thing...tattoos are both permanent and temporary. They're permanent in that once you get it it's on you for good. It'll be there when you get married, it'll be there when you get old, and it'll be there when you die (and yes, I know you can get rid of them, but if you're so hard on getting one, that kind of defeats the purpose). At the same time, they're very very temporary. When you die, that art dies with you. I mean yeah, you can take pictures, but it's not REAL per se. It'd be like having a picture of a painting. No, the art gets burned or thrown into a casket, and on top of that if you're buried you're dressed. Furthermore, it's entirely possible that people won't remember you for your tattoos. There was a poignant demotivational (though i guess the de is kind of null) of a person with some intense sleeves hugging a little kid that said tattoos don't change character. And yeah, that's right they don't, but they don't necessarily define it either.
And then there's the idea that people tend to get tattoos of things involving temporary obsessions. Or they'll get something really really vague or universal. That's a whole nother Foamy rant in and of itself (although this is less of a rant and more of a hmmm type thing) that people in general just aren't creative. And those memorial tattoos...I don't know, I guess that's more meaningful than putting it on the back window of your car. Okay, actually that makes a lot of sense, the memorial thing. But with some people, yeah it's a nice design, but it'd be great if it was on your wall and not your back. That begs the question "Who is this really for?" If I spent as much money on a tattoo as some people do (these living works of art end up costing more than non-living ones in some cases), I'd at least want to look at it! I mean boy....having the wrong thing on the wrong part of your body could make for some awkward love making. Well, or some hilarious love making (making note of this for that Hooker Jesus story...)
There's something that seems...Freudian in all of this however...or at least overly psychological. I mean, anyone can get tattoos. Maybe people "get addicted" to getting tattoos because they believe they're covering up their body with something better. It almost makes sense when you remember that I said it seems to be mostly females jumping on this whole tattoo thing. That logic gets taken to a whole new level when you realize that fat people have more space for tattoos. Instead of ugliness, you can then view it as "more potential beauty." As much as that's a joke, there's a fair point in there. Women tend to be more likely to have image qualms, right? It'd make sense they'd then try to cover that up with art.
Just a thought...
I don't have a beef with tattoos, I really don't. If you want em fine. If you've got some sort of tattoo fetish (and I know its out there otherwise some people wouldn't have half as many as they do), that's fine. but me? I don't get it. For me tattoos are something that give you special powers...and until they do that, i probably will not be going through any such process.
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