Q&A: Getting a tattoo - yes, no or negotiable?

Hi guys, I got an interesting question from one of my readers on an older blog post and it was about a discussion he had with his parents about getting a tattoo. His parents are vehemently against it but he thinks it is a fairly harmless way to express his identity. The reasons why his parents are against the tattoo are as follows: firstly, you'll regret it - you'll think it looks cute or cool for a few years then you'll change your mind eventually but you can't get rid of it. Secondly, you'll be mistaken for a gangster who has tattoos. Thirdly, it doesn't look professional - it could adversely affect your career prospects if you show up for a job interview with a tattoo. And lastly, the human skin will eventually sag as one gets older - my reader's body may be a taut canvas of human skin now and a tattoo may look great for now, but once the skin stretches and sags, it will look all wrong. So he has asked me for my opinion - he was rather tempted to just go get it done without telling his parents, but he wants to know what I think first. Well then, I shall attempt to do this topic justice.

Personally, I don't have a tattoo as I am mostly afraid of the pain - let's not forget that aspect of acquiring a tattoo. But I am also concerned that I may change my mind at some stage about the tattoo and there are non-permanent alternatives that I have used before. I remember shocking everyone with the 'tattoo' of a dolphin on my right arm, only to reveal that it was non-permanent - I achieved the effect I wanted, it only works once and then people just get used to the fact that you have a tattoo. There is a huge market right now for non-permanent tattoos and the quality is great, the beauty of it is that you get to try different designs rather than be stuck with one for the rest of your life. The same principle applies to piercings as well, it is the thought of permanently altering your body that puts me off the idea totally. Whether or not you might change your mind is a personal choice, I've met people with tattoos they are perfectly happy with and others who have changed their minds - the worst example was my friend Adam who went to Spain on holiday, got drunk and then decided to get a tattoo done. The tattoo was in Chinese characters as he thought it looked cool, but of course Adam doesn't speak Chinese and I'm like, dude do you know what it says? And he was like of course, it means 'courage and strength' or something and I'm like, no it doesn't and you should have seen his face. To be fair, it was a bunch of Chinese characters that meant nothing when put together - but why was he getting a Chinese tattoo in Spain when he was drunk?

As for the second allegation of tattoos being associated with gangsters, I think we can dismiss that. Yes there are certain cultures which are very anti-tattoo such as in Japan for example, where you could be refused entry into a public bath or onsen spa if you have visible tattoos as that is associated with the Yakuza mafia. But there's a huge difference between having a discrete, small tattoo which can be easily covered up or having one on your face (yes I've met people with tattoos on their face) which is really a statement! I had a colleague who had a tattoo on her upper right shoulder, so there's no way anyone can see it unless she deliberately wants to show you that tattoo or if she is on the beach wearing swimwear. Certainly nobody in the office could see it when she was fully dressed in the office, so it never caused any issues in the workplace. Furthermore, the design of the tattoo is a important factor - the mafia are not going to go for rainbows, teddy bears and pink hearts - so if you have say the tattoo of a sunflower or a cute kitten, no one is going to mistake you for a member of the mafia and if they do, then they're clearly very stupid (in which case, who cares what they think). So unless my reader decides to go for a very extreme form of tattoo in the most visible parts of his body, nobody is going to bat an eyelid and there is absolutely no risk of anyone mistaking him to be a member of the Yakuza!

As for whether or not having a tattoo will be a problem say in a job interview, it depends on where the tattoo is. I would definitely steer clear of anything on the hands and anything above the neck, basically you need to make sure it is in an area which can be concealed by normal clothing. I have a colleague who has tattoos on his arms, I didn't see them until one particularly hot summer's day when he turned up in the office in a T-shirt and I was surprised as that was not what I was expecting - but nonetheless, he would not usually show up at work in a T-shirt like this, so it was something he could easily conceal in a more formal situation. I did once encounter someone in my client's office who had a tattoo on his neck that went all the way to the back of one of his ears - I found that disconcerting because I couldn't see all of it, I could only see the top of what seemed to be an elaborate design but the rest of it was beneath his collar on his back. In my opinion, he could have whatever tattoo he wanted on his back as no one would see it, but he was deliberately being provocative in drawing attention to it by having it extend up the back of his neck like that. It was a curious choice to say the least but as I barely knew the guy, I pretended I didn't see it and just ignored it. Besides, this was my company's clients - they are buying from us, we're not buying from them so I was on my best behaviour as they were our customer. But of course, such a provocative choice of a tattoo like that is bound to illicit a reaction in the corporate world and so that is ill-advised.

Moving on to the last part about the saggy skin when we get old: yes at some stage our skin will sag with age. Growing old is a fact of life of course, but different people will deteriorate and descend into decay at different rates - a lot of it has to do with how well you take care of yourself as you get older. Do you exercise regularly? Do you have a healthy diet? Do you get enough sleep - say averaging between 7.5 to 8 hours a night? How much alcohol do you consume and do you smoke? What about the environment you live in - is pollution a problem or is the air you're breathing nice and fresh? Are you generally quite relaxed and happy or are you very stressed all the time? And if you were to fall ill, do you have access to quality medical care that will make sure you are on the mend quickly? These are all the many factors that will determine how fast your body ages: I've seen some people in their 30s in terrible shape because they simply don't take care of themselves, then I've seen some people in their 50s and 60s who look absolutely fantastic. So rather than focusing on the worst case scenario, why not focus on the challenge of keeping our bodies in good shape and ageing gracefully, preserving our general health and skin tone? And if you are going to be overweight and saggy in your older years, then you're already unattractive - that tattoo isn't going to make things any worse in the bigger scheme of things.

But if I may ask another question that your parents didn't ask: why do you want a tattoo? Now I didn't get the chance to ask my reader this question mostly because I have only thought about it now so I will run through a few common answers. Some people want tattoos because they have seen famous people show off their tattoos and they think: that's so cool, I wanna be just like them. So many famous celebrities have tattoos: David Beckham, Lady Gaga, Adele, Justin Beiber, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, Beyonce, Demi Lovato, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus - just to name but a few! But if you think that Ariana Grande for example is cool, would having a tattoo like hers make you as cool as her? I'm just going to point out that Ariana Grande is an amazing singer who has given us some incredible hits, we remember her for her music not so much for her tattoos per se, though I do accept that her tattoos are part of her pop star image. Some people may claim that having a tattoo will make them special, set them apart from everyone else: but then again, all you're doing is going to a tattoo parlour, picking a design from a book and lying there for an hour or two whilst the tattoo artist works on your tattoo. The person getting the tattoo is just the passive canvas, you've done so little in the process: it is the designer of the tattoo and of course that tattoo artist who are the ones who have expressed the most creativity and individuality through their work. If you want to stand out from the crowd and make a statement, it's going to take a lot more than a tattoo to express your individuality. Go make a funny Youtube video, start a blog, design your own clothing, perform stand up comedy, go write and record your own music or if you must get a tattoo then at least design it yourself.

But allow me to introduce a case study: let's call this lady Paula (obviously not her real name). She had a difficult childhood and didn't get along with her parents, she wasn't exactly a good student in school and generally had a problem with anyone in a position of authority over her. Furthermore, Paula was bullied in school for a variety of reasons: she didn't know how to fit in, she lacked the social skills to make new friends and was a social outcast who kept to herself. She resented the pretty girls in the school who often went out of their way to make her feel bad about her appearances. Conditions were right for Paula to rebel and it started with one tattoo - it made everyone from her teachers and classmates in school to her parents freak out and that pleased Paula. After all, she never got along with any of them and making them freak out somehow gave her a sense of glee - so she decided to provoke them by getting her belly button pierced, again they freaked out, predictably so. Paula never ever had this kind of control over her relationship with these people before - when she was younger, she tried to make friends but she could never get them to like her. She had tried to make her parents proud of her but she failed to ever truly please them. But now, she wanted to provoke them into freaking out and guess what? She had totally succeeded in doing so and that gave her a sense of satisfaction she never had before, so she decided to keep on doing it as she found it fun. Fast forward to today, Paula is covered head to toe in tattoos and piercings including on her face - oh you can only imagine what it is like for her to go through a metal detector.

So in Paula's case, yes you can clearly see why Paula had felt a desperate need to rebel because she was deeply unhappy and struggled to form good relationships even with her own parents. However, what she did not realize was that two wrongs don't make a right - she managed to provoke and alienate a lot of people in her life with her more and more extreme tattoos and piercings, but doing all that failed to do the one thing that she really wanted: build relationships with people who are willing to be her friends. Besides, the people in her life went from, "Paula, oh my goodness what have you done to yourself?!" to "oh geez, here we go again, that's exactly the kind of thing Paula would do". The people her eventually failed to get shocked anymore and fast forward to today, she is literally running out of surface area on her body to pierce or tattoo. So in this case, instead of rebelling by having tattoos, there was actually a lot Paula could have done to try to fix the relationships in her life such as with her family members or indeed try to find new friends in her community with whom she could have built meaningful friendships with. But no, instead she decided to rebel and the question I want to ask her is whether or not it was all worth it, was it worth turning your body into this current state just to rebel and provoke those around you? Why spend so much time and energy trying to provoke people when you should have been focused on making yourself happy and successful? Often people who want to 'rebel' need to take a look in the mirror and fix the problems in their own lives first, rather than just rebel for the sake of rebelling. Getting tattooed clearly didn't solve any of Paula's social problems at all: no, she was barking up the wrong tree with permanent consequences.

Okay so that's my short piece of getting a tattoo. I'm not here to tell you it is okay to get it, it's not my permission that you need but I hope I've given you enough food for thought to make a rational decision about whether or not to get the tattoo. What do the rest of you think? Do you have a tattoo and do you absolutely love your tattoo? Would you like to tell us about it, like why did you get it? Was it painful? Do you regret it? Leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.