Quote:
Originally Posted by
knit at nite 
Bless you Russel.
I know I'm being a pain here with my stodgy attitude about the commercial craze for body art. It's big business in my area. My perspective comes from working over 20 years with souls who had tats in their teens for fun, fashion or more commonly gang affiliation and now find they cannot get decent jobs. The ones who realize its holding them back have to spend lots of money getting the ones on their hands painfully removed by laser or wait a long time for the free clinic to remove them because they are ashamed now of the folly of youth & don't want to send their kids the wrong message. (at least they can cover up some on the torso.) I knew a dance teacher who lost many clients because in her youth she had big "skin head chick" lettering applied to her arm.
I love those big graphic Maori type tats- on someone who is part of the culture. Sailors and military folk go for them to celebrate accomplishments and belonging to a group. But having tinkerbell or some other fantasy character permanently on one's body for a fashion statement may backfire. The weirdest thing is the moms I work with who keep adding to their ink but "can't afford" items for the kids like better clothes and shoes. grrrrr. They usually have their kids names put on their chest. Can't you remember your own kids names? (heavy sarcasm I could not get away with in the workplace)
OK I feel like I've explained my stodgy stance and will leave y'all alone now.
I halfffff agree with you -
The thing is (I work as a body piercer and am really involved in the tattoo industry) - there are people who get tattoos, and there are people who get GOOD tattoos.
The difference is - some people will as you say - get some tripe like tinkerbelle or a little bit of script on their forearm for a trendy sake.
Then there are people (like myself) who will hunt out specific artists, travel, and spend a ton on collecting their artwork on your skin. One difference in the thought process of these people is: Those with one or two tattoos for tattoos sake, will look at their arm and think "Oh yeh I have a tattoo on this" which I imagine could later lead to some regret?
The people who collect in mass - if their legs are covered in tattoos for example, it's no longer tattoos on their legs which they will regret - it's just, their leg... you can't regret your leg surely?
I don't look at any of my tattoos and think "Oh yeh my legs have big tattoos on them" - they are just there, and more will come. But then again - I don't have some stuff I picked out a book.
Just so this thread doesn't go too off topic, I'll start a tattoo thread soon in Off Topic - I've been meaning to for a while
