I don’t understand tattoos. Unless you’re a member of Satan’s Choice, a punk rocker (a real head-bashing musician, not a pitiful groupie, wannabe) or starting a career as a convict whose calling is to offend, incense, rebel and irritate, forget about getting an indelible record of your poor judgment. I refer to the large, highly visible, calf-covering type of human graffiti.
More frequently I see ink covering an entire shoulder or neck, or, good God, parts of the face. Number 11 on the German Women’s Soccer Team is a tall, beautiful, statuesque woman who has defaced her entire left arm with ink scratchings that look like she was tarring roofs; makes me want to shout at the TV: “Anna, wash your arm!”
When we were kids in grade school, one of the guys brought in a magazine purloined from his father’s sock drawer. It drew a crowd at recess. It was a collection of photographs of people tattooed, everywhere the mind could imagine and then some. One of the pics. revealed a woman with a pair of black lace panties tattooed on her nether regions. Half the boys were titillated, many didn’t know what to think and Rodney Bellany vomited. I guess it wasn’t his idea of feminine pulchritude. I sometimes wonder what lasting, emotional problems it left for poor Rodney. Last I heard he was suffering from PTTS (Post Traumatic Tattoo Syndrome.) It is not covered under our Canadian medical plan.
Many an offspring got a tattoo or two just to spite their parents, or school teacher, or any other authority figure, in a vapour-headed, misguided act of youthful perpetuosness. Think, man, think! Do you still believe the things you thought were cool when you were 16 are still fashionable? If you do, roll up your pack of smokes in the arm of your t-shirt, put blue lights around the windshield, get a tattoo of Betty Grable and call a woman a broad. A tattoo screams of the very plaintive juvenile plea that many of us can’t seem to grow out of, “WATCM ME MOMMY… MOMMY, WATCH ME!” It’s too bad Mommy was never pleased.
But, here’s the crux. Dial in Google and check the vast number of sites that list the Top 10 sexual and or social attractants, men to woman and women to men. Survey says… healthy appearance. All those surveys list healthy appearance and that definition almost always includes clear skin. Why do you seldom see any of Angelina Jolie’s many tattoos on the silver screen. Hollywood spends a lot of time and money covering them up. Have you ever seen tattoos on a TV news reporter, anchor person or sportscaster?
Guess what Scribbly, tattoos are not attractive, therefore anyone with large, visual markings is working at being unattractive. There’s a topic for the Psych 101 class. I rest my case.
Yours in social sarcasm,
Ms. Anne Throap
