There is a nasty stigma that surrounds tattoos.
Tattoos are unprofessional. For decades, this has been the strategy of many a wary mother. Unfortunately for mommy dearest, however, it's a fairly outdated notion. In today's world, tattoos don't make you unemployable nor do they make you a felon.
What does an actual felon look like? Some prisoners may have tattoos, but not all those who have tattoos are prisoners. To take this point further, I'm not living any unconventional lifestyle. Guzzling Four Lokos at a block party until the wee hours of the morning isn't on my list of items to get done. There are loads of people with body art that are on the straight and narrow path.
When people ask you, "What will your parents think?" The actually meaning behind the question is, "How disappointed are your parents going to be?" Let's be straight about one thing, nobody needs their parents' — or society's, for that matter — approval for a decision that affects their own body. Some parents are relatively cool, while others are not so much. Either way, it's not up to them, end of story.
And the implication that a tattoo would somehow make you lesser than in the eyes of a family member is pretty insulting.
It may look to you that someone's body art is completely spontaneous, but most of us like to plan out tattoos and agonize over the size, placement, and detail for months. I'm someone who has a secret plan almost all of the time; I may seem spontaneous, but that's only because you aren't in my head.
Why do you have bangs? You probably agonized about it for several months. Every time you saw someone with bangs, it reminded you of how badly you wanted bangs. Finally, after months of pining, you got bangs. That's pretty much how people get tattoos — which is good, because I hear they are permanent.
Yes, I am completely aware of what my tattoos will look like when I'm confined to the walls of a nursing home. None of us were meant to live an eternal life free of wrinkles or saggy flabs of skin. The distorted images I bare on my aged skin is a part of the beauty. How my tattoos look when I'm strutting to dining hall with the assistance of my walker will be the least of my worries. After all, there is no one I'm trying to impress.
At the end of the day, tattoos are just drawings on someone's flesh.
Older generations have tried to drill into our minds the ideas regarding what tattoos say about someone, and people allow it because they enjoy making assumptions about one another. It makes them feel comfortable, believing they are all knowing of others.
I mean sure, maybe some assumptions are more accurate than others, like how if a guy has "entrepreneur" in his twitter bio he is guaranteed to cheat on you, or if a girl's favorite Rihanna album is Rated R she probably carries a can-opener in her purse. But these are all just preconceived notions based on simple assumptions. You can never truly understand someone without speaking to them first.
I can't cure ignorance or rid people of their judgements. All I can do is celebrate an art form that has made me feel more comfortable in my own technicolor skin.
