Multi.Colored—tattooed people, tattoo dreams

In my previous post on firefighters’ tattoos I touched briefly on the issue of employee dress codes.

A hundred years ago, tattoos were quite the in thing amongst the upper crust. All kinds of aristocrats had ink in various places and there was no social stigma involved. On the contrary, it was something enjoyed by the sophisticated creme de la creme.

Over time, however, the tattoo became associated in the public psyche with sailors, circus performers, bikers, hippies, gang members, convicts and other supposedly undesirable elements, and despite the increased popularity of tattooing today, and the numbers of “mainstream” people who are getting inked, the stigma of bad associations gone by still lingers.

Thus, many employers (who tend to be conservative) want nothing to do with people who have visible tattoos (or piercings other than the occasional earring or two). Image is everything in many workplaces, and heaven forbid the nice lady who takes your bank deposit, or the guy who deals with your investment, or the people who fight fires or arrest crooks, have any visible ink. Not that anyone can prove that being tattooed affects their performance in any way. It just doesn’t LOOK good.

Have we really become a nation of Fernandos? (Billy Crystal’s character who thought it was better to look good than to feel good) Do we care so much about appearance that we don’t care about substance or performance? Is this, or is this not, the 21st century?

Have your employer told you “no visible ink”? I’ve never worked in a place where that was the rule, thank goodness, although my tattoos are easily covered when necessary. But it seems like more and more workplaces are getting more and more strict. Or am I imagining things?

If you’d like to read more about celebrity tattoos, do take a look at The Vanishing Tattoo web site, which is a gold mine of information and inspiration.

photo credit: Indiana Stan

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On the front page of today’s Los Angeles Daily News, there was a story about the new policy at the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Firefighters’ tattoos must be covered up at all times. Apparently, the LAFD brass thinks that tattoos are… unprofessional? Not the proper image that the department wants to project?

Tattoos must be covered in the firehouse as well, and according to the story they even have to be covered up while the firefighters are sleeping. Yeah, sure, the general public is keeping an eye on THAT.

This is the same fire department that recently paid out over a million bucks to settle a complaint about a practical joke. It seems to me that they’ve got their priorities way, way wrong. If I call the fire department, I don’t care what the firefighters look like while they’re dealing with the blaze. If they’re out doing presentations to school kids or in some other situation where image is king, OK, no problem, cover the ink. But it just seems to me that there are a lot more serious things the department ought to be putting on its worry list.

photo credit: kilt medic

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I’ve written a couple times before about my own health issues. I’m a Type 2 diabetic, diagnosed ten years ago but probably had it a year or so before that. I’ve gotten all three of my tattoos since being diagnosed, and had no particular problems.

The last tattoo was slow to heal, but I believe that was more due to a reaction to the red ink. Diabetics don’t heal as quickly as other people, and the slow healing can be even slower if the person’s blood sugar isn’t under good control. It’s not a complete barrier to getting inked, but it’s something to take into consideration. Slower healing means more chance of infection, scarring, and generalized messing-things-up.

This week I started on insulin at bedtime because my blood sugar was NOT under good control. Something went haywire somewhere over the last six months and I was getting higher and higher readings and having little success getting back to business-as-usual with my former combination of diet, exercise, and oral medication. Many Type 2’s think of going on insulin as somehow having failed. I don’t see it that way. It’s a lot easier to adjust the dosage of insulin than it is to try to monkey around with oral meds. I mean, how many times can you break a pill before you’ve got nothing but dust?

As I watched my readings get higher and higher I knew that it would be a very bad idea for me to get any more tattoos. High readings mean slow healing, and since I’m leaning very strongly toward having a more-visible tattoo next time (if there is a next time) I definitely do not want to have something that will swell, itch, weep, crust, and look like space-alien skin for months. So I have even more incentive to get the insulin dose right and keep things in equilibrium.

Doing a Google search on “tattoo diabetic” brings up a lot of interesting articles including several on the concept of having your Medic Alert information tattooed on your skin so you won’t have to wear a tag. Of course, if your medical condition makes tattoos a bad idea in the first place…. um, all in all, I’d rather just keep wearing my removable tag.

Do you have health issues that make you wary of getting more ink?

photo credit: mcbill

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I’ve mentioned before that I wanted to get a tattoo when I was 16. I used to draw a design on my skin every day–a little doodle of a flower on the inside of my left ankle, where the eagle-eyed enforcers of the dress code wouldn’t be likely to see it. (Yes, folks, in those days back in the stone age there was a Dress Code and if you didn’t adhere to it in every particular you would be sent home to change, if not some worse punishment.)

Nowadays, of course, there are no dress codes in school (or at least not the do-or-die kind we had) and it’s possible for a person to be legally tattooed at the age of 18. I was reminded of this yesterday when I went to my niece’s high school graduation and noticed what appeared to be a tattoo of an ankle bracelet on one young lady as she stepped down from the stage with her new diploma.

My niece wants to get a tattoo herself, and wants to start off with one on the top of her foot, going up the ankle on the outside. She’s 18, and can get one legally if she wishes, but she hasn’t gone ahead with it yet.

On the one hand, I would like to encourage her to go ahead, but on the other hand, is a design you choose at age 18 going to be something you’ll want to keep for the rest of your life?

If I’d had that little flower permanently inked into my skin, I don’t know how I’d feel about it today. I might just show it off as an example of what my younger self thought was worth keeping. I might have had it covered up with something much more elaborate later on. I don’t think I would have had it removed, because it would represent something that once mattered to me very much.

How old were you when you got your first tattoo? Is it something you want to keep for life?

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My daughter enticed me into Second Life a couple weeks ago, to watch the Phoenix Mars landing. I thought the idea of watching a real Mars landing from a virtual Mars landscape sounded interesting, so I signed up.

However, she talked me into it close enough to the time the festivities were supposed to start, that I had
no time to go through all the orientation “lands” that are offered only to brand-new newcomers. I didn’t realize I couldn’t get back there until it was too late.

So I apparently missed out on a lot of interesting freebies that are offered there, and have thus spent some time looking for other neat free stuff so I don’t look like a total newbie. (I must say that I have met some terrific people there who have given me lots of neat stuff, and I definitely do not look as new as I really am–but you know you can’t rely on the kindness of stranger forever.)

One of the places I found is called The Free Dove, and in it you can get all kinds of… free stuff. Clothing and skin and jewelry and shoes and… well, you get the idea. One of the signs on the virtual tables in the virtual store said “Tattoos,” but darn if I can find them.

Of course, since I have been given a turtleneck sweater with long sleeves and I’m wearing jeans, I don’t know what I would do with a virtual tattoo anyway. I suppose before I figure that out, I better go find me a skimpier outfit.

Are you in Second Life? Want to say hello to each other there?

photo credit: Cloudseer Writer

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I don’t recommend products here unless I’ve tried ‘em myself, so that limits the number of endorsements considerably.

I had heard about a company called Lush from a good friend who has been ecstatically using their products for quite a while now. She has without a doubt the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen–long, thick, curly and shining. She credits Lush’s shampoo for a lot of that.

When Ifirst heard about the company, it sounded great, but there were no stores within a convenient travel distance of where I live. The web site does a great job of describing the products, but I wanted to see them for myself before I took the plunge.

My daughter got ahead of me, though, and bought me some shampoo, soap, and hand and foot cream for Mother’s Day (and what a glorious present that was, too!) And now I can say that it’s well worth the effort to seek out a Lush store and check out what they’ve got.

I think their Helping Hands cream would do fine for tattoo aftercare. It’s not greasy, absorbs quickly and leaves a very light protective film on your skin. Lush is an international company (the link above is to the main page, where you can tell the web site where you live). It’s worth seeking out one of their stores, though, if there is one within a reasonable distance, because the staff there knows their products thoroughly and will be happy to give you a sample of anything in the store to try before you buy.

Have you tried Lush? What did you think of it?
photo credit: incurable_hippie

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