An open letter to you, wearer of tattoo

I've been meaning to tell you: I'm tired of looking at your tattoo.

I'm tired of your hackneyed Chinese symbols, your ugly Celtic knots, your cheap meaningless designs you picked off a wall somewhere, your pseudo-ironic-I-can't-believe-you-actually-did-that Mom tattoos. I'm even tired of your sweet little animals, your well-executed but too-trendy skulls, your homages to lost friends. There's got to be a better way to memorialize. I don't like statues, but I'll deal with them.

I'm tired of your sleeves, your upper back, your thighs, your ankles, your neck, your chest, and your biceps. I'm particularly weary of your lower back and the front of your hip bone. I should also mention that your facial tattoo totally freaks me out. You scare children. Do you ever get used to the sound of their screams as they look at your face?

I know tattoos, brandings, scarring, etc. have been common among people for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. But never among people with such poor taste. America is a nation of freedom, and freedom is the ability to choose what kind of regrettable useless crap you want permanently engraved on your person at any point in time.

As you walk around in your tank tops and short shorts in the heat of summer, your body becomes active moving public art. As much as I try to avert my eyes, you pop up in unexpected places, and over and over again I am forced to confront the question: Why did you do that? Did you spend years carefully considering and weighing out the options, choosing a design that would truly represent who you were, and get it inked by a tattoo artist you knew, trusted, and admired? Or did you wander into the tattoo parlor next to the bar where you were, moments before, drinking Miller High Life or Shmirnoff Ice and reflecting on how awesome it would be to get a shamrock (cuz you're part Irish on St. Patrick's Day) right next to your cross/butterfly/state of Texas?

I'm not saying these are the only two ways you can get a tattoo. Most likely you thought about it for a while, because the "What would you get if you got a tattoo?" conversation is literally impossible to avoid. Everyone's expected to want a tattoo, so everyone gets one. The original idea was that it was both unique and hardcore - you have the means for self-expression and you can stand the pain or the thought of ink becoming a part of your skin forever. It was counterculture and rebellion. Parents don't like tattoos.

Now every parent I see with their toddlers at the pool has a tattoo, and I almost expect the kid to slide straight out of the womb with an I heart Mom tat. Tattoos aren't counter-culture anymore, they're like little needles of popular culture. And pop culture is not permanent. Not like your dumb tattoo. I don't want to sound like your mother but.... there's no way you're not going to regret that when your skin gets all saggy and Tinkerbell starts to droop below rather than hover above your beltline.

I have to tell you though, I've been starting to feel pretty unique and hardcore for not having a tattoo, for having regular skin that is marked only by freckles. I'm feeling pretty good about it. I'm going to try to ignore the mass of tattoos surrounding me. Your poor decisions are not going to go away. I'll let you deal with that.