Tattoos are the graffiti of the human body. And just as the graffiti 'artist' defaces property public and private, the tattoo 'artist' defaces the human body, torturing the skin with needles and injecting it with ugly dyes. When I see yet another tattooed, pierced, tackle-box head, I wonder what this phenomenon means. Some thoughts of Theodore Dalrymple are worth pondering:
First, it [tattooing] was aesthetically worse than worthless. Tattoos were always kitsch, implying not only the absence of taste but the presence of dishonest emotion.
Second, the vogue represented a desperate (and rather sad) attempt on a mass scale to achieve individuality and character by means of mere adornment, which implied both intellectual vacuity and unhealthy self-absorption.
And third, it represented mass downward cultural and social aspiration, since everyone understood that tattooing had a traditional association with low social class and, above all, with aggression and criminality. It was, in effect, a visible symbol of the greatest, though totally ersatz, virtue of our time: an inclusive unwillingness to make judgments of morality or value.
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