Imagine if we all had the same hair style when we're 30 or 40 or 50 as we had when we were 20. Imagine that we all had the same bodies at those ages and wore the same clothes. OK a rare few do, but the nature of fashion is that it changes and it dates. And yet now there is a fashion of permanently marking your body.
It seems very unwise to me. As we grow older, our lives, our responsibilities, our choices, our interests and our tastes all change. Why would anyone want to permanently limit themselves in this way with a body decoration? Would you want to wear the same jewellery/watch/make-up/nail polish day in day out? We wear different clothes for different occasions and accessorize to match. Doesn't having a huge skin adornment limit your choices for self expression rather than represent it?
Aside from that, the people who tattoo themselves are doing the police a favour in many ways. It makes it very easy to identify you if you have committed a minor or major crime and/or if your body turns up after some misdemeanour. All of these optimistic young people assume within their lifetime that they will never be stuck in a totalitarian state where they want to slip under the radar or not be picked out in a crowd. Or even in a more open state where they want to protest and make a political stand without standing out for special 'treatment'. There are only a few people still alive who have the tattoos that they didn't choose themselves, but surely that is a time and a lesson we should not forget:
If that isn't enough, then there's the risk of infection:
But of course if you change your mind you can always have laser treatment and a bit of scarring, or can you...? (see: http://regrettingink.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/how-it-all-started/)
So if you really want to express yourself on your skin, be more creative about it and change it frequently using temporary decal tattoos - paper for inkjet and laser printers available from decalpaper.com and craftycomputerpaper.co.uk
