Sitting in the waiting room of a downtown Toronto counselling clinic (not for therapy, for once – scouting out locations for a student film and awaiting the arrival of my partner-in-crime), I idly flipped through the October 2009 issue of Elle, a highly-regarded Canadian fashion magazine that leans toward the haute couture. Due to this fact, I did not expect to happen upon
A: An article about tattoos;
Or B: A positive article about tattoos.
Best guesses as to which the article contained (Hint: it sure as hell wasn’t Option B).
Oh, it wasn’t all bad. The author did admit that tattoos look “fab” on Angelina and Rhianna, but she cautions the rest of us mere mortals to think twice before getting a tattoo, because we might not “suit one.”
There are some interesting notions surrounding this tidbit of advice. One is that only “certain people” can appropriately pull off tattoos. Whether they be exotic Hollywood goddesses or punk rock rebels remains to be seen, but the author seems to be hinting that “normal” people, with normal clothes, normal looks, and normal attitudes, would look positively ridiculous with a tattoo. She claims tattoos “suit” a person, like a particular outfit would, and if a tattoo doesn’t fit within the boundaries of your look, it is inappropriate for you to bother with one.
The other strange part of this article is the author’s experience with her own tattoo, which she got on a lark in college – by a tattoo artist in a dingy shop who smoked a joint the entire time and, quite obviously, ruined the Urdu script she had chosen. She went home, immediately hated the tattoo, scrubbed it with a scouring pad (allegedly believing this might actually work), and eventually gave up and took to constantly wearing clothes that hid the tattoo for the next fifteen years.
According to this enlightened individual, because she was incredibly irresponsible and chose to leave something as monumental as a first tattoo, a permanent and life-altering decision, in the hands of an "artist" under the influence of drugs in a shoddy shop, we should all take caution when getting a tattoo. The author could have stressed the importance of research, or how to locate a friendly and clean shop with talented artists, but instead she simply shrugs off her story as yet another reason why some people should avoid tattoos altogether.
Reading this, my immediate thought (aside from irritation and “I should totally write an article about this”) was, “Why doesn’t she just get a cover-up from someone who knows what they’re doing?” Sure enough, the author does address this – and claims it is only one of her many fantasies. She imagines herself (I paraphrase here) “At L.A. Ink, hair flowing over one shoulder as Kat von D constructs an elaborate piece to cover up my mistake, but this will never happen.”
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