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By infmom, May 26, 2010 11:32 am

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OK, I have to confess that I am a Judge Judy aficionado.  There is just nothing more entertaining than watching her give some fool the talking-to that was decades overdue.  You can tell that a huge number of the people standing before her have NEVER been talked to like that, and that’s half the fun.

Yesterday, though, was unusual in that every case involved people with really bad tattoos.  I mean, of the do it yourself with soot and a guitar string variety (or these fools paid an artist to do the equivalent).  One even had blobs of black ink all over his face and admitted to “tattooing his friends.”  One would hope that the friends were dead drunk at the time and have very poor eyesight and no mirrors in their abodes.  Yuck.

And last night, one of the local TV stations did yet another installment in the sweeps-month tabloid-style interview with the exceedingly well-inked hottie that that idiot Jesse James was sleeping with.  Even she admits she doesn’t like all that ink any more, but there’s no real way to get rid of it now.  They haven’t done too many closeups of her tattoos, but the ones I could see were mediocre (and having blue ink on her face was not a beauty treatment).

Much as I appreciate body art, sometimes all I can do is ask “What were they thinking?”  Why would people want to deface themseves (pun intended) like that?  What message are they trying to convey other than “I don’t give a crap”?  I know we all firmly believe we’re not going to get any older (I’m not, but I still want to be Lwaxana Troi when I grow up) and our outlook on the world is never going to change, but truthfully, what kind of life are these young men going to have when they’re pushing 60 like I am and still have black blobs all over their arms, necks, and faces?  They didn’t look like they’d be able to earn enough money for laser removal.

Heck, when I was 16 all I wanted was a flower doodle on my left ankle, in green ink.  I drew it on my skin myself and wished I could get it put there permanently.  If I’d been able to get my wish (fat chance of that in an armpit Nebraska town in the mid 1960s) I suppose I would have managed to live with it in later years, but I would have been showing it off as “Here’s what I did when I was too young to know better.”

Have you ever encountered people who seriously mess up the whole concept of tattoos and body art?  Not just the gangsters, whose ugly tattoos are there for an actual reason, but people who’ve got junk on their skin they’ll never be able to fix?  Do you think those people give the rest of us with our tasteful tattoos a bad name?

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By infmom, May 20, 2010 2:44 pm

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I got my calendars mixed up, and thought that the Diabetes Expo and the Ink & Iron tattoo show were both in Long Beach last weekend. (Ink & Iron’s next month.) I thought it’d be an interesting combination of venues, and people could go from one to the other without too much trouble (Diabetes Expo at the Convention Center, Ink & Iron on the Queen Mary).

People who have chronic diseases can’t be as carefree and casual about getting tattoos as perhaps they’d like to be.  While it might not be a case of “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” for everyone, certainly the process of invading your skin with foreign substances can stress some people’s bodies more than others.  Diabetics don’t heal as fast.  People with autoimmune disorders might be pushed into a flare-up.  People with allergies, especially nickel allergies, might have inflamed skin for years.  People with latex allergies should definitely make sure the artist is using some other kind of gloves.

I have three tattoos, and I’m a Type 2 diabetic.  I also have nickel allergy.  I got my first tattoo before I got my diabetes diagnosis, but I went to the tattoo parlor fully informed the second and third time.  Interestingly enough, I was never asked about health conditions by any of the artists who inked me.  In retrospect, I think I should have been.  I don’t think it would have changed anything, but (again in retrospect) I think it’s only right that the artist should know that much about the person he/she is working on. If I get another tattoo (still under consideration) I’ll tell the artist up front if he or she doesn’t ask.

And, of course, people with chronic medical conditions should absolutely do some research before getting body art or piercings.  The more we know ahead of time, the better we can be prepared for possible problems afterwards.  If I’d known there was a connection between tattoo ink and nickel allergy, I might have changed the colors of my designs (although as it turned out, I had no problem with the blue or green colors, only with the red which does not contain nickel).  Knowing that diabetics heal more slowly would not have stopped me from getting any of my tattoos, but knowing that I had diabetes did inspire me to make sure my blood sugar levels were well under control before I got inked.

Have you had to take your health into consideration before getting inked?  Have you been asked about health problems by your artist?  How did you handle the issue?

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By infmom, May 5, 2010 10:07 am

First of all, thank you for subscribing! But could you all please make sure your email address is correct? And that you allow emails from the site to get through your spam filters? I’ve been getting bounced emails lately and I wouldn’t want you to think they hadn’t been sent in the first place.

Thanks!

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By infmom, May 1, 2010 11:18 am

Once again, the Ink-N-Iron Festival is coming to the Queen Mary in Long Beach.  As someone who’s attended and who’s gotten tattooed there, I heartily recommend it.  Just think what the Duchess of Windsor must be thinking. 

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