I clearly just don't understand the appeal of tattoos. If they were something like makeup you throw on temporarily for an event then sure whatever but... the permanent, painful, and expensive option is the one everybody chooses? To put a picture of a bird on your arm? Lmao why

  • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
    ·
    8 months ago

    In the West, temporary tattoos are seen as toys for babies basically.

    In other areas, temporary skin markings can have significant cultural or religious importance. The West has no culture remaining and no cultural events in which we would traditionally decorate and adorn ourselves in those types of markings. We are so alienated and our culture so stagnated that there's no reason we would ever congregate and hold meaningful shared cultural events, therefore temporary tattoos get relegated to toys for babies.

    Permanent tattoos historically have also been used as signifiers of community, of joining a certain group or tribe or reaching a certain social milestone. In the West, again, that is dead and all that's left is individuals getting tattoos for individualist/aesthetic reasons to prove their "identity" to themselves and others.