Nayantara, Aamir Khan (in the forthcoming movie Ghajini), Amrita Arora, Saif Ali Khan, Lara Dutta, Sanjay Dutt, John Abraham, Esha Deol ….the tattoo-ed list of the Indian glitterati goes on and on ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
Forget the Bollywood and Kollywood stars, who in any case thrive on the oxygen of publicity.
Even a sober Jewish friend of ours in the U.S. has gotten herself a tattoo.
What’s the world coming to?
Maybe we are anachronistic straight arrows that we just don’t get it – you know this obscene craze for tattoos that adorn or desecrate (in our opinion) all parts of the human body.
Arms, upper back, lower back, neck, legs, thighs, boobs, inner thighs, schlong, lips (upper and lower)…virtually no part of the human body, it seems, is immune to the incursions from these hideous black, green, orange, blue and red drawings.
If you thought tattoos are only beauty or sex-appeal enhancing aids, you are so wrong. For several years, violent gangs in the U.S. like Mara Salvatrucha a.k.a. MS-13 and the white supremacist group Aryan Brotherhood have had their own distinctive tattoos.
Health Risks
Besides their ugly look, tattoos also come with serious health risks.
Tattoos can cause a variety of infections and transmit communicable diseases through the use of unsterilized needles and other tattooing equipment.Â
HIV (the virus that causes AIDS), Herpes, TB, Tetanus and Hepatitis are only some of the horrible diseases that can come from this tattoo nonsense.
Mind you, many of these diseases are communicable, which means once you get these nasty diseases your wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, son, daughter, dog, cat et al are next in line.
Tattoo Parlors
In the U.S., we’ve now started seeing tattoo kiosks in malls even in the smaller cities attesting to their mainstream acceptance.
To our horror, tattoo chain stores are springing up in the States. You know like those Starbucks, Best Buy or Dunkin Donut chains.
A piece on tatooo parlors in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required) cites a study by the Pew Research Center that 36% of 18- to 25-year-olds wear tattoos compared with just 10% of their parents’ generation.
Obviously, the parents (at least Indian parents) were much smarter and stuck to the temporary and aesthetically more beautiful henna or mardhani designs, mostly on hands and legs. Often, henna was reserved for special occasions like marriage.
Tattoos are Art? That’s BS
To argue, as some do, that tattoos also represent art forms is the acme of nonsense – it’s like saying that Ajith and Abhishek Bachchan are actors. Neither tattoos nor Ajith/Abhishek pass the laugh test.
What’s With the Tattoo Nonsense? added by SearchIndia.com on
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Some reasons I have heard are ridiculous. I have talked to some of my friends’ girlfriends and they will get one on their ankle or wherever because they think it looks cute. There was a big fad that started about five years ago in this country of getting a Chinese character tattoo. This character could be their own name or it could be “peace” “toughness” “fire” etc., or at least that’s what the artist tells them. But what probably takes place is that the character that the recipient thinks says “inspire” actually says “dumbass” and the Chinese people passing these messages on are laughing their asses off at the gullibility of customers who are lapping up the tattoos. I also enjoy when fat people get them and then lose weight, or vice versa, and then the skin stretches or shrinks thus deforming the original tattoo depiction.
So aside from all the health reasons you listed, there are just so many other things that makes getting a tattoo infinitely regrettable. More often than not they just look dumb. My favorite story was of a kid I went to high school with who got a Penn State Nittany Lion tattoo across his back during sophomore year, because he was in love with the school. Just about everyone thought he was an idiot for it at the time. When senior year came around and he applied, he wound up getting rejected by Penn State and wound up going to some other college. When news spread in the halls that he got rejected, everyone was in fits of laughter and no one felt sorry for him. So it’s not limited to Indian culture, as you mention in the article with the comparison to franchising chains of parlors in this country. It really is dumb though.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write: There was a big fad that started about five years ago in this country of getting a Chinese character tattoo. This character could be their own name or it could be “peace” “toughness” “fire” etc., or at least that’s what the artist tells them. But what probably takes place is that the character that the recipient thinks says “inspire” actually says “dumbass” and the Chinese people passing these messages on are laughing their asses off
Hilarious 🙂
We’ve always believed that stupidity cuts across ethnic groups.
Can I share a joke here SI? (heard during college days)
Once a Girl Tattooed her boy friend’s face on her firm boobs, the boy friend ditched her and she had to marry another guy.
On her first night she was very scared that her husband would get mad at her – on seeing her ex-boy friend’s face tattooed on her tits.
Instead, when her husband saw the tattoo, he burst out into uncontrollable laughter, she was confused and asked her husband why?
He replied ” Innum konjam varushathile avan moonji eppadi thongi pogum innu karpanai panni parthen, sirippu thanga mudiyalai” ( Just imagined how his face would look like in a few years and coudn’t control myself).
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Absolutely hilarious. 🙂
I have one more of these tattoo jokes, bear with me if you have already heard it.
When a famous basketball star undressed to have you-know-what with his girlfriend, she was petrified.
Reason: a tattoo on his dick read AIDS.
The star asked her not to worry, and wait till he gets a hard-on. She was relieved to find that the tattoo actually read ADDIDAS, the sports-gear company that the star endorsed. Says a lot about the sponsors owning the stars.
Like you and some other members of the forum, I too firmly believe that this tattoo thing is a fad, and smacks of a need to attract attention. The act of tattooing one’s body to express love, loyalty etc is unadulterated piece of nonsense which I guess, started mostly in the US of A and is now catching up in India as well.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Ach mein Gott!
Each tattoo joke here is better than the previous one.
What_if & Guruprasad,
You guys are something, man. I am in the office now. When I saw the bloody jokes, I started laughing silently, I kept my hand on the mouth hardpressed. I couldn’t controll myself and my colleagues are wondering what actually I’m doing laughing at the monitor.
I really laughed…boy. Give us more, please.