Tattoos can be a permanent reminder of mistakes of youth

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

There is nothing that epitomises the generation gap more than a tattoo.

Okay, perhaps a navel piercing, or a nose ring, or twenty-five studs in your ear – but they are all still a relative rarity, whereas tattoos are the new spray tan for teens and twentysomethings.

Which is fine – until the tatt bug is caught by deluded older folk who think that a love heart or eagle in full flight inked into their arm or across their back will somehow restore lost youth.

They may as well go the whole hog with this mid-life crisis and buy a Ferrari to drive around with the top down in the pouring rain.

And who is thinking about what they look like when everything sags south in your middle ages? What is cutting edge in your prime ends up looking like fruit left too long out in the sun?

Once upon a time, the tattoo was the domain of bikers and sailors – a symbol of rebellion, non-conformity…someone who would never need a nine-to-five job.

Records show that, by the end of the nineteenth century, 90 per cent of the British Navy had tattoos. And later on, you’d hardly be allowed to ride a Harley Davidson if you weren’t fully inked.

But when sailors had anchors indelibly inked onto their bodies, they still had the foresight to keep it to upper arms and other areas easily hidden behind shirts and trousers.

The odd rebellious adult had a small snake or symbol on their ankle or the back of their wrist – but still in a discreet spot that only the privileged few might ever get to see.

Nowadays, as in so many other areas, size is everything – and the more of your body taken over by tattoos, the more your commitment to the cause.

Equally the places that were once off limits – like your face, your neck and your hands – are blank canvasses for the artist with the coloured needle.

Indeed where discretion still reins, it’s often accompanied by considerable pain – because the most private of private parts are also up for grabs, so to speak…and not in a Donald Trump sense of the phrase.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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