I’ve been considering a tattoo and thus have been researching everything I can about it, having graduated from the Rory Gilmore School of Thought. This is how I found the tattoo blog Angry Ink and the post, “The Four Tattoos You Need To Stop Getting Right Now.”

Well this should be fun! I settled in to read it, but for a guy all about aesthetics, his blog is hard to read. The kerning is warped, which drove me mad, but okay, let’s try and move past it. Then I read this:

Mostly, and I hate to be selective, this list is aimed more at the ladies than the menfolk. I hate to be selective, but, girls, you are the worst offenders.

Oh. Okay. I mean clearly, he really hates to be selective but he’s going to be selective (because this isn’t selective).

I can almost guess which of these images you’re about to show me when you pull out your pink, blingy iPhone and start scrolling through the images. And I wait and wait as your squared-off plastic french manicure thumbnail taps the screen repepatedly while you search through all the duckface pics you made in the ladies’ room at Chipotle.

What a lovely generalization. (I’ll give him one thing, just one thing. That duckface in the ladies’ room at Chipotle line is pretty funny.)  So why are we the worst offenders? Why are we bringing tattoos that he’s sick of seeing? He blames “Pintrest.” Also known as Pinterest, if you’re familiar with the Internet. He’s sick of seeing the tattoo of the “Feather Exploding Into Tiny Birds” which is apparently a Pinterest staple.

 

I’m not psyched about this tattoo either but I don’t see what is so offensive about it. “I did this tattoo four times in one week not long ago, and one of my co-workers did it at least once that same week that I know of. So that’s five confirmed times in one week.” Yeah, well sometimes jobs are boring. But what bothers me so much is that his annoyance doesn’t seem to be directed towards the art itself, but towards the people who want it, AKA, “the worst offenders” AKA women. Am I saying that he hates women? No. I don’t know the dude. Probably not. What other tattoos is he sick of seeing?

Any and all song lyrics or quotes or whatever, wherever you put them and whatever kind of lettering, it all sucks, sucks, sucks…This is what people get when they have no imagination. Nobody ever gets something they wrote themselves, it’s always from a dead poet or some middling emo band. This the the ultimate sign that while there is very little going on between your ears, you won’t spend enough to get something nice, and you want to be like all your friends.

I’m not going to step in here and defend poetry and the written word as an artform because why would anyone deny it? Oh, this guy. Even though this is what his clients want. But wait, it gets better.

Once, as an experiment, a regular of mine handed me a printout of lyrics for a later appointment. For shits and giggles, I drew a picture of what I saw in my head. She came back for the appointment and okayed the lettering. Then I pulled out the drawing. She took it in her hands, and I could see her trembling. Tears welled up in her eyes, and with a hitch in her voice, she said, ‘Oh, my God, that is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.’ She got the lettering tattoo anyway. And I never again wasted my time creating a breathtaking, one-of-a kind artistic masterpiece for someone who wanted lettering.

Yeah, fuck that bitch for not wanting his self-indulgent “experiment” on her body forever!

Nowhere in this piece does he talk about guys who want lettering and how stupid they are or all of his male clients who come in wanting popular tattoos that have been done countless times before. Of course he has the right to say whatever he wants on his blog the same as anyone has the right to get whatever tattoos they want. I’m just bummed out to see this attitude is out there. It makes me wonder if there’s still some sort of bias against women who get tattoos.

Ladies, do you have any tattoos? What was your experience like when you got them? What’s been the reaction?

 

Images via LIFE and Flickr.

Read Angry Ink’s original blog post here.