Rise of the Tattoo

A majority of the people I call friends have tattoos; close friends, lifelong friends, brothers not by blood but by choice and some excellent women as well. And yet I recognize that the rise of the tattoo is not a good sign for our culture. As a former Marine, I’m definitely in the minority in that I don’t have at least an Eagle, Globe and Anchor tat or a bulldog sporting a campaign cover. The decision not to get a tattoo wasn’t because I had any real qualms about tattoos but it was the permanence of the thing. I couldn’t imagine what I would want on my body at the age of nineteen that I would still think is cool at forty-two or sixty-two. And by the time I was in my mid-twenties with a little more mileage on the odometer, tattoos were already becoming socially normalized and so lost the appeal of being edgy or rebellious. When I joined the Marines in 1988, the only people with tattoos were military, bikers, ex-cons and wannabe rockstars. By 1992 however, I was bartending in Southern California and saw the butterfly “tramp stamp” was already becoming common among upper-class college girls.