A trend you see growing among fashionable youth, and not just so-called “bad kids”, but even the very popular cliques, is tattoos. I see more and more otherwise well-coiffed college kids and young professionals sporting obvious tattoos. Not just the little clovers or roses on the ankle that can be discreetly hidden with clothing, but obvious tattoos including tribal patterns encircling the bicep or spread across the small of the back. And I’m also seeing it more often on girls than on boys.
This article, “Tattooing and the Illusion of Permanency”, looks at the mindset among young people that thinks that what I like and do now is what I will like and do for the rest of my life.
Those teens who get them seem to imagine that the tattoo will accurately define them for the rest of their lives, forgetting that this stage, along with the identity that the tattoo provides, is destined to recede into the past. When it does, the earring can be removed, hair grown in, spikes flattened and pants refitted, but the tattoo is there to stay. And the day will come when you will say: “This is no longer me.” Your identity will have changed.
Does anyone think back to when they were 16 or 17 or 18 and think that they are the same people now that they were then? Not only do I look different, I think of myself differently. I have different values, I want different things in life.
I’ve never bothered to look this up to confirm it but I heard on the radio a month or so ago that all these girls who get those tattoos on the small of their back are going to be especially disappointed if they want a spinal when they are preparing to give birth. Allegedly, if one has one of those tattoos, one cannot get a spinal.
“those tattoos on the small of their back “
My daughters and I jokingly refer to those as “crack tatts”. I have a tendency to make fun of things that I don’t want my kids to do and they usually join in. I’m hoping they’ll get the message that these trends are moronic.
There was a commercial-type skit on SNL one time about a tattoo removal product. It showed a woman’s crack tatt and it spelled out “SEXY”. Then her body morphed and aged many years, and the tattoo said “SO SAD”! It was hilarious.
My neice showed up this past Thanksgiving with an aweful occultic tattoo on her arm! I love the kid, but I just didn’t even know where to start.
One wonders if this will prove to effectively extend self-involved adolescence even more, if that’s possible at this point.
After all, one wakes up every morning to stare at someone in the mirror who wordlessly reminds one ‘I’m a rebel, I reject the “man”, I’ve got my tatoo, see? Lookit me!’. Wrinkles and distinguished gray, despite being out obviously of place, will not temper the self-image produced by a cognitive dissonance between what one sees and what one is (or should be).
Combine that with the fact that people with visible tatoos will have trouble interacting with in adult world, and thus find themselves working at ‘cool’ places like starbucks for $10/hr well past their thirties, which serves to even further alienate them from any possibility of greater social effort.
They will tend to fall in with other ‘rebel’ souls, as friends, to the detriment of all. And what sort of people go out with those who have significant, visible tatoos? Right – they fall in with each other: neither partner having the mediating influence of good sense or good judgement to offset the other’s lack(s).
Seems to me that tatoos are just another way the evil one separates the already weak, self-involved “man of the world” from the (sometimes humanizing) herd, and instead leads them to their, individual, slaughter.
Oh to be a dermatologist…
they will be rolling in the dough for the next 10 to 25 years as folks will reach a point in time when they decide to remove their rotten tattoos.
Especially funny to see mis-spelt Chinese words on folks..
This website is dedicated to them:
http://www.hanzismatter.com/
I think there is something in the Old Testamnt (Leviticus?) about tatoos. Father Mitch Pacwa mentioned it one night on EWTN.
Anyway, it is a pagan practice which Christians should avoid.
“Lame tribal tattoo” didn’t become a catchphrase for no reason.
Here’s a 2003 Harris survey summary about tattooees: they feel more attractive, spiritual (!), and “sexy”; the non-tattooed majority doesn’t think so.