I try to avoid giving my opinion in blog responses and in class discussion to avoid influencing the direction of the conversation. However, for this week's topic you can see that I started off by giving my opinion. It is always risky for an adult to give advice to teenagers as the intent can easily backfire and lead to the opposite behavior. This is seen in the classic, "you're not allowed to date/hangout with that guy/girl" situation. Sometimes teenagers simply prefer to ignore or even rebel against adult advice. I also admit that I could be losing touch. Your blog responses will certainly help me to understand what "kids these days" think of tattoos.
I have seen many tattoos that were mesmerizing including a Where the Wild Things Are tattoo that was as perfect as the artwork in the book. But I have also seen an incredible amount of tattoo fails with bad ideas, bad designs, and/or bad execution. I have also seen trends in tattoos that have come and gone and left the person with the equivalent of permanent bell bottoms or skinny jeans. The right tattoo on the right person for the right reason does exist, but my changing attitudes about life and the world make it hard for me to personally commit to something so permanent. Plus there are some other factors like pain, money, time, and health risks that add to the reasons why I don't have a tattoo. Yet if you read the articles below, you will see the huge increases in tattoos in the last ten years. Results of recent surveys suggest that 24% of Americans between 18 and 50 are tattooed; that's almost one in four. Two surveys from 2003 suggested just 15% of U.S. adults had a tattoo.
I am really interested in hearing your views of tattoos and the people who get them. You can explain to me why so many people have gone there and guess at the motivation. Please feel free to share if you would ever consider getting a tattoo and if yes what would it be. If you suggest your favorite Minecraft Skin, please think about how cool that would be 20 years from now. I have included excerpts from a few different articles below.
Excerpt from Slate.com
Why Do We Really Get Tattoos?
By Simon Doonan|Posted Friday, April 13, 2012,
It is the first morning of our vacation. I wake up bright and early and trot down to the ocean where I make a shocking and bone-chilling discovery: I am the only personage on the beach whose epidermis is unadorned with tattoos. Everyone is inked up except me. According to the FDA, more than 45 million Americans are now tatted up. The trend for tattoos is not exactly breaking news. But in the last few months, it seems to me that tats have gone from fad to raging unstoppable pandemic.
David Beckham, for example, used to have a bit here and a bit there, but now the majority of his upper body is inked. Those of us who follow the annual March Madness NCAA basketball tournament will have noted this year’s staggering proliferation of tats. In the past there was one reason, and one reason only, to ink up: A tattoo confirmed your status as a scary outsider rebel carny outlaw sociopath. “Don’t mess with me because I am insane,” was the intended message. And it worked.
Cut to today: Having a tattoo has lost its original. Having a tattoo means that you have a tattoo.
Excerpt from NY Times
Erasing Tattoos, Out of Regret or for a New Canvas
By NATASHA SINGER
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Kelly Brannigan was suffering from a case of tattoo remorse. Just a year ago, Ms. Brannigan, 24, had been full of hope when she and her fiancé had each other’s names tattooed across their inner wrists. But now, when she looks at the letters — P-A-T-R-I-C-K — she is reminded of the failed relationship. For help, she turned to Dr. Tattoff, a chain of tattoo removal stores where nurses use lasers in a series of treatments to break down tattoo pigments. Dr. Tattoff is part of a growing industry catering to people who may not have thought about the implications of “forever” the first time around.
Removing tattoos is costly, uncomfortable and time-consuming, but the affinity for body art is so strong that some people say they do it to clear space to tattoo all over again. Most of Dr. Tattoff’s clients are women ages 25 to 35, said James Morel, the chief executive of the company, which has given more than 13,000 tattoo laser treatments since opening here in 2004. “Maybe women are getting more tattoos than they used to,” Mr. Morel said, “or maybe they just have a higher level of tattoo regret than men.” There are no hard statistics on tattoo removal, but Catherine A. Kniker, a senior vice president for Candela, a laser manufacturer, calculated that Americans may have 100,000 laser tattoo removal treatments this year.
Tattoos have been used for centuries to reflect changes in life status, whether passage into adulthood or induction into a group like the military or a gang. In recent years, tattoos have also become a fashion accessory, a trend fueled by basketball players, bands and celebrities.
A report by the Food and Drug Administration estimated that as many as 45 million Americans have tattoos. The poll also found that 17 percent of tattooed Americans regretted it.
A tattoo that cost several hundred dollars could require several thousand dollars and many laser sessions to remove. Dr. Tattoff charges $39 per square inch of tattoo for each treatment. Each treatment incrementally fades the tattoo. Some patients are left with pristine skin, others with a shadow or white spots, Dr. Kilmer said.
Ms. Brannigan said she was happy to see the name of her former fiancé fading from her wrist. She said she had learned an important lesson: “I’m not going to get a tattoo of another guy’s name until I get married.”
Nokia patents a tattoo that vibrates when you get a call
By Deborah Netburn from TechTimes
March 20, 2012, 11:29 a.m.
Nokia is taking steps to make sure you never miss another phone call, text or email alert again: The company has filed a patent for a tattoo that would send "a perceivable impulse" to your skin whenever someone tried to contact you on the phone. According to the patent filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the phone would communicate with the tattoo through magnetic waves. The phone would emit magnetic waves and the tattoo would act as a receiver. When the waves hit the tattoo, it would set off a tactile response in the user's skin.
The patent also suggests that it would be possible to customize the physical response depending on who is calling -- similar to having a different ring tone for different family members. So if your husband calls, you might only feel a dull tingling, but if it's your teenage daughter calling you'd feel a mighty itch.
To make the magnetized tattoo, Nokia's patent suggests using ferromagnetic ink, which is ink that includes compounds like iron or iron oxide. Before going in the user's skin, the ink is heated to a high temperature to temporarily demagnetize it. After getting the tattoo, the user remagnetizes it by repeatedly running a magnet over tattooed spot.
Tattooing outgrows its renegade image to thrive in the mainstream
By Bonnie Berkowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
It's 1945, and you want a tattoo. You drive to the part of town your mom warned you about, past scruffy bars and strip shows, and arrive at a tiny shop offering maybe four colors. An ex-sailor who just clocked out of his day job rinses off his tattoo machine. Five minutes and $2 later, your arm bears a patriotic eagle - a nifty example of Traditional American artwork, although no one will call it that for decades.
Now it's 2011 and you want a tattoo. You comb through online portfolios to choose an artist and call to discuss the design and book an appointment. When the day arrives, you drive to the funky-hip part of town. In a private room, the gloved artist unwraps sanitized equipment and chooses from dozens of colors of vegan-friendly ink. Six hours and $1,000 later, you're wearing a custom piece of art - possibly in the retrocool style of Traditional American. But that kind of public image has been a long time coming.
"Society wasn't ready for tattooing back in the day," said Terry "Tramp" Welker, owner of five tattoo studios and an ink company in the Detroit area. "They thought, if you have a tattoo, you must be a bad guy. People would say, 'We don't want a tattoo shop on Main Street! Next there'll be a whorehouse next to it!'"
In the late 1970s and early '80s, tattoo magazines and conventions began to let artists share ideas, and pro athletes and MTV implied that tattoos were cool. Painters and sculptors trained in fine arts migrated to tattooing, looking at skin as a living canvas. "Modern tattooing was all in place in the 1980s and just waiting for the world to come around," said longtime tattoo artist and historian C.W. Eldridge of Winston-Salem, N.C.
A revolution in ink-making provided the consistent textures and nuanced colors and shades needed to produce a higher level of art. (Welker's company, Eternal Ink of Brighton, Mich., now makes 97 organic, vegan-friendly colors.)
Soon the Internet connected artists and clients around the globe, and reality shows let suburban viewers peek into tattoo shops from their sofas. Women get inked at least as often as men, according to most tattoo professionals interviewed for this story. Mary Skiver, who owns a shop in Cumberland, Md., said most of her clients are 40- to 80-year-old women, and they're not just biker ladies. "They've raised their kids and their kids' kids, and now they're ready to be themselves," she said.