Skipping the skulls for smilies
I don't want to upset anyone's world order here, especially not so hot on the heels of losing an entire planet from the solar system, but I'm about to quote a David Brooks column – and not wholly for the purpose of ridicule or refutation.
In Sunday's New York Times, Brooks wrote an astute, supported and uncharacteristically amusing piece on how tattoos, once novel and personal symbols of rebellion and individuality, have been all but absorbed into the flabby flesh of the mainstream middle class as a brand of decidedly conventional belonging through often tacky tableaus:
It couldn't just be simple schadenfreude at etched nonconformists losing a permanent and visible claim to non-standard status to a bored and bulging bourgeois trying to look bad-ass by pushing pigment; "another generation of hipsters, laid low by the ironies of consumerism" – and sure enough, putting to use that superior brain power those of us of taller stature are reportedly possessed of, I think I've nailed it.
Though I have tremendous respect and awe for the technical and artistic skill it takes to create a tattoo and have seen several I've liked in their context on other people, however much I might flirt with the idea of getting inked (for as I've been told, my paper-white skin would make a vivid canvas), I know I'd never rationally commit to it.
Tattoos, whether commemorative, expressive or works of art, are all about imparting permanence and external visibility on the inherently transitory and internal, physically and psychologically.
There's an element of gambling and sacrifice involved; trying to know yourself so well that you can predict what a future version of yourself will fancy, or trying to direct that future version of yourself to always be the sort of person who will fit the design, even though you know you're bound to change, inside and out.
They also restrict your options. It's like if I had to wear my favorite outfit every single day for the rest of my life, after a while I'd start to drive myself crazy with the desire just to have the possibility of wearing something else again. I might be perfectly content wearing that outfit forever if given the choice each day, but the minute you tell me I must, I'd be singularly conscious of that fact and make myself miserable.
So once it's done, you're going to use whatever mental mechanisms you've got at your disposal to make yourself like or at least tolerate it forever, because you know you'd have to go through something painful, scarring and expensive to be rid of it.
In short, I would almost certainly never get a tattoo for many of the same reasons I would almost certainly never get married.
And this is precisely where dear Mr. Brooks and I differ, and the old antiquated moralist we know and love bleeds through. For Brooks calls the "longing for permanence" that tattoos embody admirable, while I can't keep from wondering, why mar what's pulsing and adaptable, symbolizing the very nature of life, by letting something foreign and stubborn inextricably under your skin for everyone else to see?
In Sunday's New York Times, Brooks wrote an astute, supported and uncharacteristically amusing piece on how tattoos, once novel and personal symbols of rebellion and individuality, have been all but absorbed into the flabby flesh of the mainstream middle class as a brand of decidedly conventional belonging through often tacky tableaus:
Everybody who has been to the beach this summer has observed that tattoos are now everywhere. There are so many spider webs, dolphins, Celtic motifs and yin-yang images spread across the sands, it looks like a New Age symbology conference with love handles.After having to admit that last line was gold, I still had to wonder: Why was Brooks, the Times' token torch-bearer for conservative mores and vintage values, bothering to write about tattoos?
A study in The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology showed that about 24 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 50 have at least one tattoo, up from about 15 percent in 2003. Thirty-six percent of those between 18 and 29 have a tattoo. Pretty soon you'll go to the beach and find that only the most hardened nonconformists will be unmarked. Everybody else will be decorated with gothic-lettered AARP logos and Katie Couric 4-EVER tributes, and Democrats will have their Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers scratched across their backs so even their morticians will know which way they voted.
It couldn't just be simple schadenfreude at etched nonconformists losing a permanent and visible claim to non-standard status to a bored and bulging bourgeois trying to look bad-ass by pushing pigment; "another generation of hipsters, laid low by the ironies of consumerism" – and sure enough, putting to use that superior brain power those of us of taller stature are reportedly possessed of, I think I've nailed it.
Though I have tremendous respect and awe for the technical and artistic skill it takes to create a tattoo and have seen several I've liked in their context on other people, however much I might flirt with the idea of getting inked (for as I've been told, my paper-white skin would make a vivid canvas), I know I'd never rationally commit to it.
Tattoos, whether commemorative, expressive or works of art, are all about imparting permanence and external visibility on the inherently transitory and internal, physically and psychologically.
There's an element of gambling and sacrifice involved; trying to know yourself so well that you can predict what a future version of yourself will fancy, or trying to direct that future version of yourself to always be the sort of person who will fit the design, even though you know you're bound to change, inside and out.
They also restrict your options. It's like if I had to wear my favorite outfit every single day for the rest of my life, after a while I'd start to drive myself crazy with the desire just to have the possibility of wearing something else again. I might be perfectly content wearing that outfit forever if given the choice each day, but the minute you tell me I must, I'd be singularly conscious of that fact and make myself miserable.
So once it's done, you're going to use whatever mental mechanisms you've got at your disposal to make yourself like or at least tolerate it forever, because you know you'd have to go through something painful, scarring and expensive to be rid of it.
In short, I would almost certainly never get a tattoo for many of the same reasons I would almost certainly never get married.
And this is precisely where dear Mr. Brooks and I differ, and the old antiquated moralist we know and love bleeds through. For Brooks calls the "longing for permanence" that tattoos embody admirable, while I can't keep from wondering, why mar what's pulsing and adaptable, symbolizing the very nature of life, by letting something foreign and stubborn inextricably under your skin for everyone else to see?
posted by Holly at 2:41 AM
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