Sunday, February 28, 2010

Shut-up Stupid Sunday: Ugly Tattoos

I don’t have any tattoos, but I do understand the reason people get them. For many people tattoos are a way of setting themselves apart and showing they are individuals. In a nation where most organized groups are striving for “ideological purity” declaring your individuality is understandable. I also realize there are times when a tattoo can relay useful information.

What I don’t understand is why anyone would go to a bad tattoo artist.

The inspiration for this post came when I met a girl who had several tattoos. The first one that caught my attention was the one on her arm that was either a fish or a duck. Trying not to get caught up on that I looked discretely at her cleavage. She had a tattoo at the top of her left breast proudly saying, “Marry” with the second “r” x-ed out.

I really don’t know what was worse, the fact that the tattoo “artist” misspelled a simple name, or that he thought he could make up for it by just x-ing out the second “r”.

Seeing this girl’s “artwork” made me remember someone I worked with once who had a tattoo on his arm that looked to me like a 2nd grader’s drawing of three rabbits with a circle hovering over them. I asked him why he had a tattoo of bunny rabbits on his arm and he told me that they were, “Indians dancing in the moonlight”. I had to take his word for it.

My feeling is tattoos are like jokes; if you have to explain it, you’ve done it wrong.

Perplexed why someone would get put something that ugly on his body I had to ask, “Why would you go to a tattoo artist that can’t draw?”

His response was, “He works cheap.”

I was speechless. If you are going to try and save money, why do it on something that will be on your body permanently?

If you are going to get a tattoo, a little due diligence pays off. Check out your tattoo artist’s previous work, and make sure they can spell. If you don’t the first impression you leave is not one of individuality, it’s declaring to the world, “I’m an idiot.”

So to all those people that don’t check out the work of a tattoo artist before they permanently disfigure their bodies I say, “Shut-up Stupid, your expression of individuality is one of stupidity.”

5 comments:

Descartes said...

Tattoos are the pierced ears of the new millennium. As a portrait photographer I have seen everyone from small children to little old ladies with tats-most of them small and cutesy.

The ones that get my attention are the people with so many tattoos and piercings that you can't see where one starts and the next begins. As with a bad tattoo, I tend to wonder what the point is.

Cher Duncombe said...

I don't get the thing with tattoos either. Especially with women. Don't they realize that as they get older, things go south with some accompanying wrinkles? Some things are best not visualized.

Darrell B. Nelson said...

The small and cutesy ones I understand, a bad small and cutesy tattoo is easy to either hide or ignore, and as things go south the small cutesy ones are either cutesy with wrinkles or hidden by the wrinkles.
But before I'd trust a tattoo artist with my body I think I'd get a little one out of sight before having them do those huge ones that if done bad make you the laughing stock of the town.

JD at I Do Things said...

Maybe "Marry with one "r" x'd out" was trying to make a witty statement about her opinion of matrimony?

No, probably not.

Darrell B. Nelson said...

A halfway descent tattoo artist would suggest covering up their boo-boo with either a "Never" in front, or a "Me" at the end.
But she might have been worried about how he would spell either of those.