Why do people get tattoos? Can anyone actually answer this?
Now I am not talking about the body tattoos that you get when you become a man in Samoa or some other Pacific island where hot running water is a luxury. No, I am talking about the ones people from the so called developed world; get between a trip to the local Cineplex and the 7-11. The tattoos you get when you flash your ID and hope that the tools that are being used won’t give you hepatitis or beriberi. Does anyone really know why it seems that people, more than ever, are covering their bodies with designs, symbols and emblems that haven’t been seen as body art since, oh I don’t know, the Iron Age?
I remember when I was younger; the thought of permanently marking your body was something that was done only by two types of people: 1) drunken sailors in some seedy port that was covered by a dense fog, you know the place, found only in an old Warner Brothers movie and 2) the ones that would ride about the country on Harleys bringing mayhem and violence to small sleepy towns. Now almost everyone has a tattoo or knows someone who does. But almost no one can say why they got it other than they liked the idea of it and so they got it.
So instead of saying that getting a tattoo is a call by people for their ancestral and cultural heritage, maybe it’s just a fashion statement, a fad waiting for the next thing to excite us. But if that’s the case, why do I have one?
Now I am not talking about the body tattoos that you get when you become a man in Samoa or some other Pacific island where hot running water is a luxury. No, I am talking about the ones people from the so called developed world; get between a trip to the local Cineplex and the 7-11. The tattoos you get when you flash your ID and hope that the tools that are being used won’t give you hepatitis or beriberi. Does anyone really know why it seems that people, more than ever, are covering their bodies with designs, symbols and emblems that haven’t been seen as body art since, oh I don’t know, the Iron Age?
I remember when I was younger; the thought of permanently marking your body was something that was done only by two types of people: 1) drunken sailors in some seedy port that was covered by a dense fog, you know the place, found only in an old Warner Brothers movie and 2) the ones that would ride about the country on Harleys bringing mayhem and violence to small sleepy towns. Now almost everyone has a tattoo or knows someone who does. But almost no one can say why they got it other than they liked the idea of it and so they got it.
So instead of saying that getting a tattoo is a call by people for their ancestral and cultural heritage, maybe it’s just a fashion statement, a fad waiting for the next thing to excite us. But if that’s the case, why do I have one?
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