Multi.Colored—tattooed people, tattoo dreams

I used to watch all the tattoo reality shows. I thought they were a good idea, getting people used to the idea that tattoo parlors aren’t just places for bikers and sailors to hang out. But the more I watched, the less I liked what I saw.

Naturally, a reality show isn’t really reality. The camera crews have to be there, and no matter how much the people in the show get used to the presence of the crew, they are never going to act the same for the TV show as they are when nobody else is watching. Plus, the show’s not going to waste time filming the humdrum events of the average day–they want drama and flash and stuff that’s out of the ordinary so as to attract the audience. I think “Inked” came closest to showing reality and that’s because it focused more on the artists and their interactions than it did on the customers. But how much can you do with a half hour show, especially in a shop where the owner is taking care of other businesses as well?

I’ve seen reports in several places that life on “Miami Ink” isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. The artists aren’t there every day, the people who supposedly spontaneously walk in to get a tattoo have actually been auditioned ahead of time, and so forth. I don’t know if all that’s true, but it certainly seems to be a common topic for discussion. It is pretty obvious that the entire process of applying the tat to the skin can’t be shown, because good, careful work takes hours, and the audience would go to sleep. Not to mention that they want to show multiple customers, not just the work that goes into one piece.

I haven’t watched “LA Ink,” but I did think Kat got a raw deal when they booted her off “Miami Ink.” Too many big egos in one small shop. I’m glad to see she got the last laugh. But I doubt her show reflects the reality of life in her studio any better than the previous one did.

Do shows like this encourage every Dick, Jane and Harry to go get inked? Does it mean that people have unrealistic expectations when they walk into the shop? Is the process shown clearly enough that people realize that it’s messy and painful and time-consuming to end up as beautifully decorated as you want to be? It just seems to me that cutting everything down into a few quick clips gives people the entirely wrong idea.

Anyone else have an opinion on that?

photo credit: leedsyorkshire

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I don’t know about anyone else, but I was very surprised to find out that tattoo ink can fade in the sun. I guess I thought that “permanent” really meant “permanent.” But that’s not so.

While the simple passage of time alters tattoo ink (as anyone who’s seen an elderly man with a tattoo he
got decades ago while in the military can attest) sunlight can cause the brigher colors to fade faster than they otherwise would have. Red ink, which seems to be in a class by itself already, fades most noticeably.

I’ve been able to see this in my “swoosh” of seven stars over my collarbone, which is the tattoo that I most often display in public and which has gotten a lot more sun exposure than my others. The red stars have faded more noticeably than the others (although all of them show signs of fading, and I need to go get them touched up one of these days).

Wearing sunscreen over a new tattoo is advice nearly all of us get from the artist along with other aftercare instructions, but those of us who don’t automatically reach for the sunscreen when we’re going to be out in the sun for any length of time may slack off on using it after a while. Even a little bit of sun exposure adds up over time.

Now that summer weather is beginning (it sure is hot here in Los Angeles today!) we all need to start thinking about taking better care of our decorations. Wearing sunscreen is a good idea anyway, and while it won’t completely protect a tattoo from fading (there really isn’t any magic potion that will do that) it can help. And it can also help prevent skin cancer that might really damage your decorations.

Consumer Reports magazine posted a link to a web site called Skin Deep that offers a lot of useful advice about cosmetics in general and sunscreen in particular. That link will land you on a “splash page” that asks you to give them your email address, but if you look closely you will see a link that says “no thanks” and you can click on that to get access to the site without giving them any personal information.

Taking good care of your ink is good for the rest of your body, too.

photo credit: James Jordan

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It’s that time again!

The Ink-N-Iron Festival is coming up in June. This is the festival where I got my amplified ankle tattoo a couple years ago. It’s on the Queen Mary. Just think, you too can lie there and get inked and think “If only the Duchess of Windsor could see me now.”

They’re adding a bonus this year–get tattooed at the show and they’ll give you $10 back on your admission if you show them the ink when you leave.

Shall we meet there?

photo credit: rockman13

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I am a big fan of tattoo web sites, as one might imagine. This one caught my eye today and it definitely deserves a wider audience.

Carl Zimmer’s Science Tattoo Emporium. My daughter the Linguistics Ph.D. candidate would like the tattoo of the glottal stop.

Yet more proof that not all tattooed people are hirsute bikers.

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Years ago, before I got inked myself, I read Robert Heinlein’s classic Stranger In A Strange Land. One of
the characters in the book is a fully tattooed sideshow performer named Patricia Paiwonski. She stands in a tank full of cobras, offering money to anyone who can find an inch of un-tattooed skin below her chin. The problem is, of course, that while she’s naked, she’s got a “fig leaf” in the form of a huge boa constrictor, so there’s no chance of anyone collecting the prize.

“Aunt Patty” is a founding member of the Fosterite church, and the Fosterites, as Heinlein put it, were not celibate. And the people brought into the church by Foster himself have his “Kiss” tattooed on them, so they can be recognized by others like them.

I always thought that was an interesting form of identification. But I wasn’t so sure about Heinlein’s amater psychology, implying that “the syndrome that can lead to full tattooing” is a euphemism for being addicted to sex. Of course, there’s a lot of sex in Stranger, especially the uncensored version, filtered through Heinlein’s misogyny and aversion to homosexuals, so who can tell whether a fully-tattooed person is any more addicted to sex than anyone else in the book?

While I do think there is a difference in body consciousness in multicolored people (compared to those who have no desire whatsoever to get inked) I don’t think we’re displaying the equivalent of Foster’s Kiss just because we’re more decorative than others.

Or am I just displaying my own amateur psychology along with my ink?

photo credit: M.V. Jantzen

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