I have no tattoos.
No one in my immediate family has a tattoo.
My closest friends have no tattoos. If they do usually it is a single tattoo.
If you understand genetics you know this is not likely a random coincidence. We self select and align with people who hold not just similar views but have similar dispositions about the world.
Despite their increasing commonality a tattoo still says something and people with multiple are telling you something.
The rise of the tattoo is a fascinating one, it has become normalized and made banal by the modern world. Where once such body art held deep religious meaning or signified membership to a group of some kind today it is more likely to have no meaning. I have seen cringe Star Wars tattoos bedeck 35 year old men as they grind through their gym workouts. No meaning. But I have also seen slightly embarrassed businessmen get coverups of ex-wives (as a pinup girl no less) transformed into the Grim Reaper. The latter took special care that his tattoos were not visible when he wore a collared shirt and tie.
We live in an era of bland modernist tastes. Minimalist interior design reigns triumphant. Walls are white and bare. A certain grayness permeates many living spaces and fewer and fewer people seem to retain visual collections in the real. Art seems often absent from the walls of their houses. It is not just our houses that have crept towards this boring conformity we see it in the automobile market as well.
Cars all look the same now, even the normies notice it. It unlikely to stop in the future. The new Ford Bronco and the new Land Rover are almost identical in looks. Our safety and efficiency focused society is going to end up in the same place. The banal evil of globalization reflected in the most mundane ways.
In some ways I think tattoos are certain peoples attempts to fill a void in themselves. Armchair psychology doesn’t even have to enter it, her daddy issues are neither here nor there it is as simple as an attempt to combat the aesthetic emptiness that surrounds us. Combine this with the age of the self and it makes perfect sense that lower middle income single people spend fortunes on skin decorations. There simply isn’t any other beauty or even interest for them to encounter in much of day to day life.
Home interiors, cars, and of course modern architecture. Drab, boring and unimpressive. We don’t pay for extra design flair on office park buildings, we don’t see the point. Human capital is worth both more and less in this paradoxical way. Our economic efficiencies rob us of having the will and desire to pay for beauty. Instead people are pushed into self decoration. I see it as a kind of silent scream that many are making.
All this of course is genuinely not meant to offend the tatto’d amongst you. No doubt your reason is sincere. Or maybe it isn’t but you are at least honest with yourself about that. Even fewer still might have genuine religious convictions behind their body art, this we have understanding of. Meaning is however not just reflective of your own internal reasoning, meaning evolves from the community around you. Like every taboo that has been broken there are consequences - we may not even have seen the end of them.
My last comment here is perhaps a counter-intuitive one. It speaks to a trend that goes against the common wisdom. I encounter more and more non-risk takers bedecked with tattoos. Perhaps this is the other end of the spectrum? The removal of that taboo sees many become hobbyist in their collecting of body art, they are more introverted and thoughtful than brash and outgoing. The signals that once existed become blurred in the banality of the modern age. We struggle to discern friend and foe at times as things erode.
Is there an answer to this? I’m not sure - the age of the individual is the age of the tattoo. It’s coming to an end. But tattoos as an art form or identity signifier will remain. The far future seems likely to mirror our past more than anything.