It really aggravates me when people make negative comments about girls being or getting tattooed or pierced.
I talked to a guy last night who said he didn’t understand why pretty girls would do that to themselves. That “if a guy falls in love with you and loves everything about you, he’s not going to want to look at all those tattoos.” Well, first off if someone loves everything about me they will love my tattoos too. And second, as if that is the only goal in life. I should restrict all of my life activity, personal expression and personality in the hopes that some fucking asshole will fall in love with me.
Everyone always brings up the forever issue too. Like “your skin is going to get old, or it will stretch when you have babies (ha! to that one let me tell you!)”. My main response to this is, “my skin will look fucking shitty no matter what, tattoo or not”. And I’m pretty sure that if and when I get to that point I won’t be stupid enough to think that everyone in the world is going to want to look at it afterwards. Therefore, I will be making an effort to cover up and in the end will be the only one having to look at it, and you know what? I’ll be able to look at all of my artwork, even the shitty stupid crap and remember how awesome my life was. Each tattoo marks something in a persons life, even if the tattoo itself doesn’t mean a whole lot. People have a million and a half reasons for getting them. In the end its their personal choice and they deserve to make that choice without judgement about it. You would never get a tattoo? Fine, good for fucking you. Don’t sit there and tell me it was a stupid decision. Who are you to judge?
And the next most common thing is the wedding dress issue. I’ve heard countless girls say that they want to get tattooed somewhere, or they would love a piece on their arms or their back, but they wouldn’t want it to show when they’re wearing their wedding dress. Really? Wearing a fucking white dress for one day is more important to you than an amazing and meaningful piece of artwork that you will have with you forever? A friend of mine once showed me pictures of a neighbor’s wedding and the bride had a full sleeve on one arm. My friend stated that “see she has a full sleeve and it looks awful with the wedding dress”. My response was “I think her sleeve is awful, not the fact that it doesn’t look right with a wedding dress”. In my mind, not all tattoos are created equal, and occasionally you get someone with something shitty looking, but oh well. Not our place to judge. Even if its a crap tattoo it may still hold meaning for the person.
Another common question/statement I get is “who would want to marry you with all those piercings and tattoos?”. I have some friends/family that are what you would call traditionalists. They want their wife to take their last name, they want them to wear white at the wedding, kids will be raised in a certain way…etc. A bride with visible tattoo work would certainly not be acceptable (but then again if they were truly sticking to tradition their brides shouldn’t be wearing white to begin with). All I have to say is that if having tattoos and piercings means boys will not want to marry me, cover me the fuck up! Marriages are not (or should I say “should not”) be built on such trivial issues as the presence or lack of tattoo work and honestly as if my only goal in life is to wait around for someone to want to marry me. Apparently my life is pointless unless I aspire to, and succeed at that goal.
Yes I have a vagina and breasts, and as far as I know I am capable of having children someday, but fuck if I’m going to give in and live up to societies expectations of me and ever plan to be married with children just because that’s what people are “supposed” to do. If it happens awesome, hope it works out for me, but guiding my life choices around that crap? Never.
I have to say that some girls should wake up and smell the fucking roses. I don’t mean to say this insultingly or judgmentally of course, it sucks to be judged. But I feel like girls today are still in a way being brainwashed. There is this grand idea that you are supposed to find someone to fall in love with, work towards getting married, pop out a few kids, and then die when you hit close to 80. Really? Its 2008 and we’ve only gotten that far? My point may sound harsh and I recognize that this may be a real pursuit or desire for some people, but does that mean it has to apply to all people, and especially to girls (or women if you’d rather)? Why must we say “when we get married and have children” instead of being honest and saying “if we get married and have children”.
I guess I just feel that there is just too much individuality among people to have all of them stick to such a basic outline for life. Why do we feel that we must always search for that one person to spend the rest of our lives with? The truth is that one person will never be enough. One person can never be all that you need and we need to stop wasting time searching for them, even if it is only in the back of our minds. Everyone in your life brings something different to the table, one person will never really bring all that you need bundled up all nice and neat in a sexually attractive package. We need to enjoy who we have in our lives at this moment and leave thinking about the future to science fiction writers.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this later on. I’m what you would call an “anti-relationship” person, although I think that label is sometimes a little too extreme. I’ve had experience with relationships and it wasn’t all bad, but I feel that I have always been unhappy in them. By trying to fit into what society’s definition of what is normal and what should make me happy, I ended up being very unhappy indeed. My expectations were from an external source and not an internal one. The second I made my internal expectations (or lack of them) a priority over what I was “supposed to” want I realized that a relationship is in fact not what I want, or more importantly what I need.
Relating thoughts about tattoos to thoughts about marriage and relationships? Yeah, that’s how my mind works……..I could write a concluding paragraph summing up all my points and tying them all together, but this is a blog, not a paper assignment for a sociology class. Plus, I’m clearly not a fan of structure, just be content that I agreed to use punctuation and paragraphs.
1) Regarding tattoos, after watching shows like “Miami Ink” and “LA Ink” I have come to see tattoos as an art form rather than the typical stereotypes, which I used to have. Like you said, many people get tattoos for very personal and important reasons that are lost to people. I don’t know if I would personally get a tattoo, that would be the “fear of commitment” side of me.
2) The institution of marriage is also a very touchy topic for me. People, specially women, should be happy first with themselves and not happiness projected by others. A friend of my mother told her, very nonchalant and I am sure she meant nothing by it, “Oh, Rachell already graduated now she is ready to get marry.” I shivered. The church I went to, all the women around my age are already married with a baby. Some of them haven’t even been to college! I don’t know… they seem happy and I dislike to judge them (which I guess is what I am doing) however, they seem so *content* with the role society has given them. They used to make fun of me for doing homework on Saturday nights and looked down at it because it just wasn’t the norm. Marriage is fine but I just highly dislike the social roles *within* the marriage. By the norm, who is going to be doing the cooking, ironing, taking care of the kids, etc? Sometimes I think that marriage would suffocate me. I am open for a Sartre-Beauvoir relationship, though!
I think this is all just about judgment and how it’s very easy for people to forget that very wise phrase “to each his own.” Me personally, I love tattoos. I love art and I love the fact that theres a way out there to have a piece of art that means so much to you that you can take with you anywhere, even to your grave. But on the other hand, a girl with full sleeves and like a ton of tattoos on her upper thigh, or shit like that don’t really float my boat. But I realize why people choose to do that and I respect it. Just as one person might not like someone who’s tall or someone who’s short, brown hair, blonde hair, talkative, shy, etc… It’s easy for people to forget that everyone deserves to make their own choices and certainly don’t deserve judgment. That being said, I believe everyone should be given the benefit of the doubt. There are plenty of things about girls or just people in general that might turn me off but if I really love other things about them then I will put those dislikes aside…not because its the right thing to do, but because I have to..it’s a subconscious thing.
On getting married and having kids. That is just our nature as humans…not that I know every thing about the Bible, but I’m pretty sure it says it in there. But I agree with you, just as we have the right to believe in our own faiths, religions or non-religions, not everyone should feel forced to conform to any “tradition.” I plan on getting married and I plan on having children. I value family a lot, that’s just how I was brought up, so close with everyone in my family. So it seems only natural that I want that to continue in my life and have my own family. But people come from many different places and value different things. Some people who may not have had as fortunate of a family life as me might think they don’t want it. And that is totally fine.
I think the greatest gift we were given by God or whoever or whatever people believe in, is that we have the ability to make choices. We have the ability to make mistakes. We have the ability to say we don’t want children and make a mistake, have an unplanned baby and have it change our lives and change our minds about what we thought we wanted. Just the way things work. Its great.
So, whether you want to be married, want children or not, get a tattoo or get them removed, that’s all totally great and valid and the best part is that all that can change, and when it does, it’s not the end of the world… It’s just a new direction in an ever changing life.
Eddie Vedder once wrote “It makes much more sense to live in the present tense. ”
Good Advice Ed.
Good Blog too.
P.s. I love when you curse because I can picture you talking about this stuff and you always are so passionate when you talk about things you believe in and I love that.