Posted on 09/09/2004 12:10:53 PM PDT by quidnunc
You there: hey! You're a mother of three, a Bush voter, you sing in the church choir, you have a master's degree in pre-Renaissance art, and you have a gigantic flaming skull tattoo on your neck. Right? I know you're out there. Because every time I write about tattoos, and how I find some of the modern examples of Skin Adornment a bit excessive, I get a letter from someone who insists that she's all of the above, and there's nothing peculiar about her at all. True. EXCEPT THE GIGANTIC FLAMING SKULL TATTOO.
Let me be clear: I do not favor banning tattoo parlors. I do not favor stoning people with inky flesh, or herding them into pens, or encouraging anyone to shout FIE when they see someone who has decided to engrave his facial epidermis with a spider web for the rest of his mortal days. Whatever. Live and let live. It's your body. But after my last trip to the State Fair, I really wonder what people are thinking. …
I'm not talking about the classics — the anchor tattoo, an emblem of service, a heart with MOM, or any other small embellishments of your biceps' terrain. I mean the florid decorations at the base of the spine, the spiky tribal symbols around the neck, the elaborate tableaux on the back that look like you were horribly burned by an old YES album cover. … All I'm trying to say it this: I know you're trying to tell us something, but it's really not coming across too clearly. Perhaps if you wrote it down on a piece of paper and handed it out, we'd get it.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Agreed, but StarTribune.com is on the excerpt list.
I just read the whole piece - I swear I didn't plagerize the author.
That, or it was confiscated by those meddlesome customes agents in Tiajunna!
It was a Tiajunna J? Now that some series stuff.
Red
;^)
I just never saw a tat that I thought I'd want on my body for the rest of my life.
Glad you did.
Shouldn't it be uidnunc now?
I have never particularly cared for tattoos and I would never have one. Something about my childhood barber's arm who survived the holocaust always disturbed me.
I told my kids to never get a tattoo as I would not look fondly upon it. One day my daughter came home with her tongue pierced.
I will never understand, and I wish that I had just shut up about such matters.
Once again Lileks writes with wit and keen observation.
*giggle*
Just show me the young ladies with a tattoo because I know that's someone willing to do something today that they will regret tomorrow.
Har! That's a good uestion.
I swear that guy works at our local Home Depot.
He's actually a nice guy once you get to know him, but the huge tattoos (and not just the ones on his scalp - the huge one on his neck, and the ones down both arms) are rather off-putting at first sight.
But my dog likes him, so he must be O.K. Of course, she's a Lab and she loves everybody . . .
Well, there was that time in the Navy when I wanted to get "Mom" tattooed on my bicep and it turned out there was only room for "om." Humiliating.
Ha. There’s a dumb radio show called Loveline that has Dr. Drew and Adam Corolla as hosts (or did at the time). Dopey kids call up with stupid questions about sex and drugs and stuff.
One day a girl called in because she had pierced her clitoris. Her boyfriend had several piercings in his penis, but one was some sort of a “hoop” piercing on the end of his penis.
So anyway, during the course of having sex with her, his hoop somehow got tangled up with her piercing and tore it out. Then it started to get infected and she was all worried about it. Ha.
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