Multi.Colored—tattooed people, tattoo dreams

Not long ago, I recorded a show on the History Channel called “Ancient Ink.” I finally got around to watching it yesterday. The host traveled around the world, featuring various traditional styles and methods of tattooing. A Maori artist amplified the tat on his back, a Japanese artist tattooed his leg in traditional style, and he showcased other people getting traditional tattoos (for example, a Polynesian body suit and an Inuit tattoo done by sewing the ink into the skin). He finished up at Zulu Tattoo in Los Angeles, which is where my daughter and I got inked (although we weren’t lucky enough to get inked by Zulu himself, who is so popular that one has to wait months for an appointment, and for good reason).

Naturally, the effect on me was to get me thinking about more ink.

But that’s not what got me to thinking tonight. There was the obligatory segment on tattoo removal,although it was focused on the removal of gang tattoos. I’ve had laser resurfacing done on my face (in a less than successful procedure to get rid of my eye bags) and the plastic surgeon put me under general anaesthesia for that. I know what it feels like afterwards, and I certainly wouldn’t want to go through it with just numbing cream on my skin.

Tonight on Los Angeles’ Channel 5 news, the “health and beauty” segment also talked about tattoo removal, and this time the patient was a woman in her 30s who was having a teenage indiscretion erased. The reporter, Marta Waller, revealed that she also had had a tattoo done on her foot as part of a past story on tattoo parlors, and is currently in the process of having it removed. And she agreed, removal is very painful.

I wonder why a reporter would go that far in quest of a story, if she wasn’t really committed to keeping it? Did she plan all along on having it removed, not treating it as a permanent thing? Was it just one of those things that sounded like a good idea at the time, and she regretted it later? She didn’t go into it.

At least the host of the “Ancient Ink” show got his new tattoos for good, spiritual, personal reasons, and I doubt he’ll be the host of a show on getting rid of tattoos any time soon.

Meanwhile… I’m definitely thinking about my own next trip to the tattoo parlor.
photo credit: riviera 2005

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If I’d been able to make that green-ink flower-in-pot design on my ankle permanent back when I was sixteen, I would have done so. But would I have wanted to keep that doodle for eternity? I thought so at the time.

Nowadays, tattoo removal is big business. Way, way too many people are getting inked and regretting it, and paying “Dr. Tattoff” and his compatriots to undo the damage.

I think maybe there should be a mandatory waiting period at all tattoo parlors, although I doubt something like that would be enforceable. But if you’re required to submit your design and come back in a week, maybe you’ll decide that having Tweety Bird on your butt isn’t as appealing as you thought it was when ALL your friends were going to Joe’s Tattoo.

Of course, who am I to talk? My last tattoo was done on impulse, at a big tattoo show on the Queen Mary. It was kind of cool to lie there having work done on my ankle and think what the Duchess of Windsor, a frequent Queen Mary traveler, would have said. (I’ve read that she and the Duke were both tattooed, themselves.) If there had been a waiting period for getting a tattoo, I would have been out of luck. And the mediocre ankle tattoo that I walked in with, would never have been changed into the fantastic ankle tattoo that I walked out with.

Hmm, maybe “submit your design and wait a week, unless you’re at a tattoo show?”

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