must be a MILLION aging tramp-stamps out there...
Posted on 10/16/2014 6:25:53 PM PDT by Impala64ssa
The year is 2001. Eighteen-year-old Rees Barnett impulsively walks into a tattoo parlour and picks the trendiest designs off the wall display: a tribal arm band and a shoulder tribal tattoo. But over the years, both those symbols quickly went from cool to cliché, leaving Barnett with tattoo regret. “Unfortunately, I can’t blame it on booze,” he said. “[It's] one of those bad decisions that you wake up and realize, oh crap, I’m stuck with these.”
Now, at age 32, the pension fund analyst is erasing this part of his past at Precision Laser Tattoo Removal in Toronto. A technician zaps his two tattoos with a laser while Barnett endures much more pain than when he got inked. “It almost feels like you’re getting electrocuted, pinched all at once and times that by 10.” There’s also the painful price tag. In total, he’ll spend an about $5,000 on multiple treatments over the course of about a year. The original tattoos cost him around $400. Barnett says it’s worth it. “It’ll just be nice to think of the tattoos not being there, if I’m going swimming, if I wear a short-sleeved shirt to a company outing.”
People like Barnett are fuelling a booming tattoo removal industry. Tattoos have gone from being something you get in prison or the army to a popular fashion statement. And what’s fashionable one decade may appear horribly outdated in the next.
“I went in thinking a butterfly would be a sweet, feminine tattoo that I wouldn’t regret,” said 31-year-old Dominique Farr as she pulled back her hair to reveal the fading butterfly on her back she got when she was 17. The real estate agent has already endured 10 treatments at Precision Laser to nix it. “It takes away from my fashion sense and it’s just tacky,” she said. “I don’t like it anymore.”
Well I hope the CDC set some money aside to study the phenomena of teen stupidity regret.
I have never seen a tattoo I thought was attractive. Or a nose ring. Or piercings beyond one in each ear (and I do not mean those hideous stretched out loops).
The “DUH” moment!
Why anyone would CHOOSE to look like they have a skin condition is beyond me.
must be a MILLION aging tramp-stamps out there...
I’ve read that some of the very same tattoo shops are offering removal treatment and making much more money.
I actually find a small nose stud to be very sexy on the right lady.
I have a friend with two daughters. One got a tattoo, the other commented, “Tattoos are just to help identify the strippers from the patrons.” Guess which one is going to college.
My beautiful 22 year old niece just got a horrid green skull tattooed on her chest. I’m sick about it. She has a lot of them. She’s broke, doesn’t own a car, but she manages to get herself tattooed all over. Pathetic. And no, she’s NOT on government assistance of any kind.
In college many people I know got large, childish tattoos that have dated abysmally - it takes a really stupid person to permanently inscribe a sitcom or movie catchphrase or a cartoon character (especially one of recent vintage) on their body.
Just think about those poor saps that got
“Obama” tattoos...
Nope, just can’t get any sympathy going,
and to think they probably paid for it
with an EBT card.
Wow, who’d thunk all those flowers, unicorns, butterflies, and creepy skeletons wouldn’t fit a 30 year old’s fashion style.
In the American southwest, the tattoo removal industry is booming but not just for cosmetic reasons, but to hide previous affiliation with gangs.
Nothing will make a cool trend go cold faster.
I’m of two minds about tattoos.
Some of them (rarely) are really special art. But they are permanent, and frankly, they often look like disfigurements. A lot of times I look at people who have them and my first impression is that the person has a disfiguring mole or mark. It’s only when I get closer that I realize it’s ink, and it does nothing for their overall appearance.
Tattoos do not enhance. They hide, and disfigure.
Before and after pics from the Toronto clinic mentioned in the article, Precision Laser Tattoo Removal. The procedure does not always remove all the ink.
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