When I was growing up in the 1930s, anyone with a tattoo was one of several things: a sailor, a soldier or a marine who had had too much to drink in some far off country. You knew the tattoo artist was drunk when they spelled “mother” wrong on their shoulder.
The other night I attended a tuxedo-clad dinner party, where all of the beautiful women were wearing evening gowns. You know, the kind that drape to the floor with a lot of shoulder and cleavage showing. I started to have a nice conversation with a young lady, young as in 30-something with three kids and an overachieving husband. Her shoulders and neck were adorned with a tattoo of some unknown event in her past. By the time the evening was over, I kept track, somewhere around 28.5 percent of the women had a visible tattoo of some sort. Tattoos seem to be the badge of rebellion for that generation.
During the event, I was having cocktail-party-type conversation with a very attractive woman who is the executive vice president of a mega-million-dollar company, when I noticed a tattoo on her shoulder. Suddenly my attention was taken away from the conversation and I began to fixate on it. How, when, where did she get it? How much did it cost? Does she regret it? Is it her badge of honor in her book club? These are all questions that divert your attention from some potentially interesting conversation with interesting people.
Depending on where the body art is applied, it will be interesting to see how much will their tattoos be sagging when they get old? Is that taken into consideration when the tattoo artist applies the art work? I have seen a lot of tattoos at the beach where women have a small one just below the ankle bone where their sock covers it up, so they can fit into the mainstream without much notice.
At the dinner party when I was talking with the tattooed woman, I asked, “Would you display an original Picasso in a Starbucks? No? Then why put a $325 tattoo on your priceless shoulder? You are a beautiful woman and everyone’s eye is drawn toward that tattoo.” Her explanation? “It was a college trip to Baja and a half-dozen of us got tattoos and the size and location of them depended on how many margaritas one had consumed. You should see some of the tattoos on a few of the girls. They had a lot of margaritas and have regretted it ever since.”
When I was about 10 years old, I went to a carnival one summer and the “Tattooed Lady” paraded out in front of the side show as an inducement to come inside and see the rest of the artistic display. Unfortunately, she had put on an extra 150 pounds or so and many of her tattoos had stretched beyond recognition. They just kind of all blended together in one tattoo artist’s biological mess.
I saved my 10-cent entry fee and bought some cotton candy and a snow cone instead. Those goodies only lasted a few minutes, but the memory of that obese tattooed lady is still with me today. Maybe living art is a good thing if you need it so that people will remember you. I played basketball in the Navy against a motor mechanic who had tattoos on both of his elbows. They were simply hinges and I think those hinges of his needed a little less lubrication because he missed a lot of his shots in the game that night.
The Maoris of New Zealand were big tattoo fans. The men decorated their faces all over with black, geometrical designs in an effort to scare away the evil gods as well as the enemy. I didn’t pay much attention to those tattoos until I was waited on in a restaurant in Los Angeles. The waiter had the Maori black geometric designs tattooed all over his face, forever.
I am a great believer of whatever works for your psyche. The problem is that your psyche changes over the years and as it does, the tattoos get obsolete and begin to sag. As you get older, the two will never be in sync again unless you opt for surgical removal or psyche changing meetings with an expensive shrink.
Halfway through dinner I realized that the beautiful lady’s tattoo was no longer the focus of my attention during our conversations, and once I had overcome my biased distraction I said, “Whatever works for you, is fine with me.” I still hold the theory that if you don’t display a Picasso in a Starbucks, you don’t display a tattoo on the shoulder of a 35-year-old beautiful woman with three kids.