Now that's a nice tattoo!
I'm evolving.
When last this Baby Boomer looked at tattoos over two years ago, I rendered forth a rather curmudgeonly view. I looked, I winced, and I looked away.
But I also wrote that each generation establishes its own cool, and if we learned anything from the 60's, it's that we ought to respect each other's differences. So, Gen X, Gen Y, and millennials everywhere, today I respect you and embrace you and your tattoos!
Somewhat. Kind of.
Most Boomers take no shine to tattoos, and there is a special reason for this that most non-Boomers cannot appreciate. In the late 60's and early 70's, the world was generally divided into freaks (i.e hippies and pseudo-hippies) and greasers (motorcycle heads, uneducated bigots, and singer Wayne Newton). There were also "preps," but they're irrelevant to this discussion; for more on the subject see the movie "Caddy Shack" and/or the latest L.L. Bean catalog.
Freaks protested the Vietnam War, read pretentious books like Steppenwolf, and smoked the very best dope their parents' monthly expense checks could afford. Greasers protested protesting the Vietnam War, got no expense check and didn't know the meaning of "pretentious," and were frequently found engaging in a favored past time of yelling at freaks "why don't you get a haircut, you (expletive for a gay person)?!"
The greasers were also the ones with all the tattoos, often in the form of a skull and crossbones, a crudely rendered Jesus, and/or lots and lots of hearts and arrows with chicks' names etched through the center of them.
These were our youthful Baby Boomer times and our heroes reflected those times. How many tattoos do you think the Beatles, Mick Jagger, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, and Jerry Garcia had collectively? Well, math isn't exactly my strong suit but .... let's see, carry the one, add the two, multiply by 15 .... ah yes, the answer is zero! And all of those seminal rock stars who survive to this day continue to be ink free.
That is why to many Boomers the concept that tattoos are now considered hip seems to make about as much sense as if big fat pimply guys who never shower and pick their noses in public were to suddenly be considered hip!
But I have looked at tattoos once again and I have evolved. And the fact is I now find some tattoos kind of pretty. As a Boomer, I would never get one myself, but one or two or even three strategically placed tattoos on a younger person are quite okay in my newly revised and updated book.
For example, I kind of like this one:
And this one is very nice indeed ....
And this one I love! (who wouldn't?)
But on the other hand,
if you think these are cool
(and yes, that's Adam Levine) ...
if you think these are cool
(and yes, that's Adam Levine) ...
Don't forget that in far fewer years than you think,
those will change into
THESE!!!
And if you think THESE are cool,
Don't expect me to ever share the best dope my parent's expense check will afford with you!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
