My father explained tattoos to me in this way (way back in the 1960s, in another, far away land): Son, “tattoos are a form of self-mutilation.”
He was right. Two of the things I relish when I go back home for a month every Summer (besides the low crime rate and invisible police in public places), are the complete lack of tattoos - as well as a lack of “human blimps”.
The site of these two “features” of the American landscape are generally the first signs that I am back in my adopted home upon landing at SFO.
To get serious for a moment - tattoos are a sign of a mental illness, or extreme confusion/unhappiness (kind of like spiked orange short hair on a woman).
The individual is basically, to one degree or another, crying out for attention because deep down there is an unhappiness, or emptiness, in their soul.
The proliferation of this form of self-mutilation testifies to a lost generation (or two).
The worst thing about tattoos (of course) is their permanence. You can grow out your hair, or loose the weird clothes, but those big arse tattoos are a different story...
...it is not an accident that this form of “body art” (I say that with a voice dripping with sarcasm, being an artist myself), has proliferated in the decadent, morally colapsing West - particularly in Western Europe, which is at least a generation or two ahead of the USA in pursuing a headlong rush to national suicide....