Tattoos Taboo or trendy

Tattoos Taboo or trendy My tattoos; love on the inside of my left wrist, and the crown from the Keep Calm and Carry On posters with KBO (a Winston Churchill catchphrase which stands for keep buggering on) underneath it on the inside of my right ankle. Photo taken by me. Im 28 years old, I have a BA in History and am a semester and a third away from a BA in Communications, Ive never been arrested, never done drugs, and whilst I dont get to Mass every week, I go more often than Christmas/Easter/Holy Days. I also have two tattoos. Tattoos, I might add, that werent just drunken whims. And its not just me a number of my friends have at least one tattoo, and many of those have more than one. It seems like after every semester break, at least a couple people I know at school return sporting new ink. Naturally, this got me thinking about tattoos and how society in general feels about them. So of course I did a little research. In 2009, Pew Research did an end-of-decade survey asking the American public a series of questions about the previous ten years. One of the questions asked pointed out that more people were getting tattoos than in previous decades and asked respondents how they felt about that change. Just 7% said it was a change for the better whilst 45% said the change made no difference and 40% said it was a change for the worse. Earlier that year, CBS News posted a story entitled Tattoos Becoming More Accepted at Work, which cited the statistic that 23% of college students have one to three tattoos and that 36% over a third of adults aged 18 to 29 have them. In 2010, UK newspaper The Guardian reported that a survey indicated that one-fifth of British adults are inked. Another Pew Research study, this one conducted in 2010, aimed to create a portrait of the so-called Millennials generation (those aged 18-29 in 2010). The study puts the percentage of Millennials with tattoos at 38%. By comparison, the study says that 32% of Americans aged 30-45 have at least one tattoo, and then the numbers begin to drop away sharply: of Boomers (aged 46-64), 15% have at least one tattoo, and of those above age 65, just 6% sport ink. Whilst the stigma against tattoos/tattooed individuals appears to be going strong amongst older Americans, amongst those 45 and under there is an increasing tolerance of and even enthusiasm for tattoos. This has significant implications as far as workplace policies regarding tattoos are concerned; if society in general is more accepting of tattoos, it follows that visible tattoos will become less of an issue. That being said, a full 70% of Millennials and 73% of those aged 30 or older said that their tattoos are normally not visible. Early this year, Harris Interactive conducted a new poll regarding tattoos. According to the poll, 21% of U.S. adults report having a tattoo, which is up from previous years. It seems that with the increasing number of adults with tattoos this permanent body art is becoming more accepted fewer people think it is related to deviant behavior than before yet among those without tattoos there are still several negative stigmas associated with having tattoos. All in all, each later poll seems to show an increasing amount of acceptance, or at least ambivalence as opposed to negative reactions, towards tattoos and individuals who have them. Additionally, all of the polls that ask people with tattoos if they regret getting them, a large majority (as high as 84%) said that they do not. It seems, then, that tattoos might still be taboo with older generations, but they are increasingly trendy amongst younger generations, especially college-aged individuals. If you are considering getting a tattoo, I have a few pieces of advice. Plan what you want, where on your body you want it, and where in the world youre going to get it beforehand. Do your research, especially about tattoo shops and artists in your area. You want to find somewhere that is clean, safe, and friendly. And if youre going to have their work on your body for the rest of your life, you want your tattoo artist to be someone whose work you admire. Dont get tattooed when you are drunk, and if youre getting tattoo number one its probably a good idea not to do it on a whim. Most importantly, though, do everything you can to make sure that youll be in that 84% of tattooed individuals who dont have any tattoos they regret.