Tattoo You

Growing up I always associated tattoos with men in the military, hard-core bikers and Popeye the Sailor Man. I was around 20 years old when my first clean-cut friend got a small one on his upper arm….he tried to talk me into to getting one but I never even considered it. This was in the mid 70’s and I told him tattoos were a fad and like all others would pretty much go away and only be associated with less than desirables. That was one bad prediction.

Tattoos or if you prefer body art is obviously not a fad and probably here to stay although I say this with an asterisk. Yes teen-agers and young adults are getting things on all parts of their bodies like never before and some seem to have more skin with art then without it. However I really wonder what these people are going to look like when they age into their 60’s, 70’s and beyond. The tattoo which looks cool on your large bicep now might be a joke when you become a senior citizen. More interesting is what’s taking place with young women who have this affinity for large tattoos on their lower back. They of course like the way it looks when they are working out at the gym or walking the beach in a bikini. But what will that design look like after a couple of kids and about 30 or 40 years….might have to cover it or face a ticket for indecent exposure.

The same applies for body piercing but that’s easier to handle when you get older or maybe even get a job where something stuck above your eye, in your nose or on your tongue just won’t cut it. Should one chose they can simply remove the hardware from their body but getting rid of a tattoo is not as easy and certainly more painful.

Since my original prediction that this stuff was just a fad was as bad as those who said the South would win the Civil War I want a second chance. I figure somewhere around 2040 when today’s young adults have aged and look pretty hideous tattoos will go back to being small, restricted pretty much to upper arms and ankles and favorites of only men in the military, hard-core bikers and of course Popeye the Sailor Man.