Tattoos. Are you inked?
How about BRANDED?
Even Tattoo Breast Implants?

Tattoos have become quite mainstream in the last 10-20 years. Surprisingly in my research for this article, the percentage of people who had tattoos actually dropped between 2003 and 2008. The perception of people with tattoos is that they are more rebellious. 27 percent of people without tattoos actually believed that people with tattoos were less intelligent than people with tattoos. 39 percent believed that people with tattoos were less sexy, and 47 percent believe tattoos made the person less attractive. Ironically, of the people who were inked, 31 percent felt it made them sexier, and 19 percent felt it made them more attractive. I guess that people with tattoos are more appealing to others with tattoos, because they appreciate the art.

People get tattoos for a variety of reasons, many women find tattoos sexy. I did not have any tattoos until after my son was born. I was 27 years old by that time. I wanted a tattoo to represent the most important thing in my life at the time, other than my wife, our father/son bond. I had wanted a tattoo since I was 18 years old, but I had just never had anything that stuck out in my mind as, "I have to have that permanently embedded into my skin." After my son was born, I wanted something simple, small, and on my bicep, where it could be concealed easily. I found a tribal tattoo pattern that I liked and fit four letters into the pattern. I sent it to the tattoo shop and went down to get inked.

When I got there, he had already drawn up the tattoo to three times the size of what I thought it was going to be. Instead of making him redraw it, I decided to put it on my right forearm. Obviously the much larger size would make it harder to conceal, but since I had been working for myself for nearly 5 years, it was not likely going to play a part in my employment. Besides, I could always wear long sleeve shirts to any job interviews.

I believe that Harris Interactive's tattoo statistics are significantly skewed. We have no idea what the demographic of the people surveyed was, which likely had an impact on the answers. Though Harris' website stated, "This Harris Poll® was conducted online within the United States January 15 and 22, 2008, among 2,302 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online."

Recently, Glamour did an article on the Best and Worst Celebrity Tattoos. I am actually surprised that Mike Tyson and Eminem did not make the list. Tyson was recently featured on Oprah, and in all honesty seems like a changed man, finally. Tyson's tribal tattoo seen in this photography below is in my opinion, unique and classy. Classy? Really? Sure, why not, he was at one time, one of the greatest boxers of all time until he sabotaged his own future. But, it works for him. I was not able to uncover the meaning or symbolism behind that one, if there was any.

My parents and my wife's parents would be in the group who thought that a tattoo added a negative perception to the individual. However, they grew up in a generation where tattoos were basically for people in the army or navy. Our generational perceptions are vastly different in today's day and age. The tattoo removal business isn't booming but it is definitely profitable. There are many people who get tattoos that regret getting them. Of the people who have been inked, only 16% regret getting it done. The top two reasons for regretting it were the person was young when they did it, followed by that it was permanent. However, you pretty much knew it was permanent when you got it done, so how can that be your reason for regretting it?

The same study should have researched people's feelings on branding. Branding is actually done on humans, believe it or not. You will occasionally see someone, I saw an NFL player on Monday Night Football, who decided it was a better idea to get branded, than get a tattoo. Now, I am all about branding when it comes to business, but as someone who has multiple tattoos, I think branding is about the dumbest thing you can do to your body. Branding falls into self-mutilation in my book. Here, I have included another photograph, this time of a branding on someone's arm. I suppose mutilation of boob implants into your tattoo is similar, at what point do you finally say enough is enough? As you can see, if you think a tattoo is unattractive or not sexy, you really ought to be repulsed by branding. I guess this is supposed to be a swastika?