I Hate Tattoos Because Everyone Has Them Now
article below by Dubai-raised contributor Aadi Singh, image above by Robbie McIntosh
I gave myself four tattoos in high school. First with a fountain pen nib, taped closed, then with real needles I managed to order to my house while my parents were at work. I insisted on using India ink, despite having tattoo ink available to me because I thought it would be more authentic. I also gave myself three piercings. On some level, it was so I could participate in the alt epidemic of 2020, but there was probably more to it. If this was all performative, it was a really good performance.
The first professional tattoo I received was a pretty standard experience for the Gulf. Go to someone’s apartment, let them know that you’re outside via WhatsApp, and wait while they get set up in their studio/office/bedroom. Hopefully they sanitized their bench. Hopefully they sanitized their needles. Hopefully they know what they’re doing. It was a sternum piece and the artist fucked up – “didn’t go deep enough brother“ – so he went over it again and I passed out from the pain. Got a discount for that.
My second professional tattoo was done in Boston during my first semester of university. I had to take a $45 Uber to the studio and my artist told me he needed a smoke break before we started. He went into the bathroom to vape. This one hurt less. It was done on my shoulder, which was fleshier, and the artist went deep enough on the first pass this time. I picked at the protective wrap that was applied over the coming days as it started to bulge with blood and ink and plasma. It cost $400.
My third, probably my last, professional tattoo was done in a shopping mall in India, where tattooing is a technical profession rather than an artistic vocation. I was charged under $150 for the piece, no tip required. This one didn’t hurt at all, in spite of my hangover and the remnants of the alcohol poisoning I had experienced the night prior. I still don’t like how it looks when I wear a t-shirt.
Tattoos were just becoming uncool by the time my peers and I were old enough to get them. I feel lucky that mine are, in my opinion, not too cringe, but some of my classmates from high school, the ones who returned to South Africa, and Australia, and England, suffered far worse fates. For a time during my first year of university, my Instagram stories were awash with fine-line waves on ankles, lions on pecs, and Harry Potter quotes on forearms. Now, four years later, tattoos have crossed the boundary, if you’ll believe Twitter and r/redscarepod. The pendulum has swung and the Overton window of aesthetics has shifted. Tattoos are punk, and goth, and rebellion, but no one is any of those things anymore, not really. Guys have started saying that they are like bumper stickers on Bentleys again, and they just get away with it. I’m still pretty neutral on them, I think.
There is some long, winding analysis to be made about how tattoos have lost their luster in the wake of the trad movement gaining steam. I personally think the business school ingrates I share lecture halls with are just terrified of commitment in general, most of all to actual ideas and art. This may explain why people switched from Smiskis to Sonny Baby Angels to Labubus so quickly. Why define yourself with permanent, painful ink, which says something about you when a small figure signals that you are generally aware of the cultural landscape around you? Hell, you can even dip your toe in the water if you want. Get a little star with an imperceptibly-small needle on your forearm. The blob that remains in five years will remind you of how wild you were during undergrad.
I met someone last week who grew up in Soviet Hungary and had pivoted from journalism under Grósz to events marketing for an athleisure company following the dissolution of the USSR. He lived for the slop he had been deprived of as a young man. His desk was occupied by a massive, AI-art Mandalorian mousepad, and his calf and wallet both bore the same image of Marvin the Martian. He drove a Bumblebee-edition Camaro. He wore himself on his sleeve to such an extent that speaking with him felt sort of voyeuristic. Nothing about that could be performative; the alternative is too masochistic. It’s scary meeting someone who can just be themself so profoundly, even more so when they never smile and insult your major during your first conversation. You’re constantly waiting for a punchline or a crack, anything to break the ice. I still think I’m better than him, though, because my interests are cooler and more niche, etc. And because I don’t work in events marketing.
Ultimately I will probably crack and seek out some lame flash on Instagram the next time I have too much to drink. I may even PayPal an artist €40 to use their design like last time. The issue now is that I actually have tattoos, which is lamentably no longer contrarian — or effectively performative. I am stuck between the rock and hard place of either getting them removed (too contrarian) or finding a subversive style of tattoo that I actually think will age well (not contrarian enough).
Basically, I’m fucked.
