Pictorial Essay: Body Mutilation Via Tattoo

I’m not a prude. I have close friends who have tats. I came this close (fingers a half inch apart) from getting one. But, I was terrified what this 5’1″, 120 pound, woman would do to me …. my mom.

Chris “Birdman” Andersen, plays for the Miami Heat. Playing the role of Armchair Psychologist, I’m going to conclude; this man hates himself.

chris anderson birdman before tattoos
2003, when he was normal … small tats on his arms
chris birdman andersen
2006 ….. arms covered with tats
chris birdman andersen
2008 …. now the neck
chris birdman andersen
2010 …. entire neck, plus his ear-lobe
Chris birdman andersen
2011 ….. filling in every blank spot
chris birdman andersen now
Current …….. FUBAR!!!
S-C-A-R-Y Shit

Author: Stucky

I'm right, you're wrong. Deal with it.

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flash
flash

I don’t think it coincidental that with the rise societal narcissism also came the explosion of the tattooed attention seekers.

Theory for Tattoos

The motives for tattoos are many, but they all have a common subtext. A tattoo can mark a group identity—sailors, soldiers, inmates, gangs, motorcyclists. It can memorialize a person or event, as in a virtual archive of snapshots of tattoos showing names and faces of deceased loved ones (I attended a presentation of the archive by two academics in Toronto last year). Sometimes they happen by blunt peer pressure, a set of 20-year-olds on Saturday night getting drunk, knowing not what to do until one of them blurts, “Let’s go get a tat and a ring!” (a good friend tells me of pulling out just as his turn came up).

Beneath the variety, though, is the same call: “Look at me.” The bearer may think it’s cool or lovely or poignant, a certification of membership, a work of art, or a testimonial, but a selfish demand accompanies each message, not because of what they say but where they say it. Tattoos go on a person’s skin, and so they can’t be separated from the ego of that person. It’s always there as part of one’s being, and others must register it as much as they do one’s face and speech. A tattoo has form and color and meaning, but it also solicits a social recognition, a “This is me, check me out.”

At least that’s how many people regard the sight of a tattoo on a nearby shoulder. Perhaps it’s an ungenerous attribution, but they can’t help finding tattoos obnoxious. The tattoo seems to summon their eyes, to draw their focus even if they have other things they wish to think about. In that sense, a tattoo is narcissistic, and narcissism is coercive. It lives off of others’ notice, and when the narcissist fails to draw attention, he feels disturbed and wounded.

http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/09/a-theory-for-tattoos-2

Dutchman
Dutchman

Tattoos are very useful – tells ya’ right away the person is an idiot.

I assume any gal with larger visible tats – is advertising the she gives blow jobs.

flash
flash

LOL…Dutchman …made me think of a quote from Vox Day on the subject of women with tatts.

A natural predator
“I have an instinctive liking for tattoos on women, mostly because I am a natural predator. They are like a shortcut; tattoos tended to mean I didn’t even need my highly developed talent for sensing insecurity and emotional instability in attractive women. A dagger between your breasts or a panther on your back? You might as well hand me a remote control with your name on it.” Vox Day

Dan
Dan

He is gonna look so bad ass when he’s 60 and flabby.

NickelthroweR
NickelthroweR

Greetings,

I see things differently. I see tattoos as a way of saying, “I own this.” After all, here in the USA, it isn’t possible to own any actual property. You may think you own your home and car but the State always has possession of the title to your car and, well, stop paying property tax for a little while and you’ll see the REAL owners of your home show up.

There isn’t a single thing you own (including gold) that the state can not take away minus your skin. It is all you’ve got left.

Tattoos are sorta like a military uniform for civilians. In the military, I could tell a lot about a person by their patches, badges, ribbons, insignia, rank, etc. I can also tell a lot about a person by the tattoos they choose. Finally, this isn’t anything new. The 6000 year old guy they found frozen in a glacier in N. Italy had something like 54 tattoos on his body.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

NickelthroweR,

Yeah, but where’d those tats get that Italian cavemen? Dead in a snow bank. Seriously, what kind of confidence deficit do you have to have to not merely feel that you own yourself, but that you have to go around telling other people you do and – as Flash says above – essentially grab them by the ears and force them to look at your particular message? Besides, if getting tatted is a form of speech, then – like all speech – its utility lies in the hearer getting the message that the speaker intends. The “speaker” may think he’s signifying “I’m my own man”, but if other people just thinks “looks like an idiot” or “she looks like she’d blow the whole motorcycle gang”, then they’re sending a different message than they think they are. In other words, lost in translation.

I’ve stopped trying to explain why I think tats are stupid. I just say I think they look gross. People have the right to get tatted, and I have the right to think they look gross. Also, the tatted are not a protected class… 😉

Thinker

The man NickelthroweR mentions is Ötzi, also known as the Iceman. The tattoos are believed to be caused by pain treatments he received along his spine and at a few joints.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ötzi

But the history of tattooing also shows that covering the body with ink goes back millennia.

There is nothing new under the sun.

NickelthroweR
NickelthroweR

@ISKA

I think that one of the worst things that ever happened to this country was political correctness. See, we still have racists, bigots, fascists, misogynists, eugenicists, etc but now those people no longer out themselves. What a shame. I like to know who believes what so I know whom to befriend and whom to avoid. Tattoos help in this. I can get a pretty good idea about someone based on the ink that they have. It also helps that my best friends owns a nice upscale tattoo shop in Scottsdale, AZ. I learned a lot about all of this from her.

You can hate the ink but if you are some used up college grad with $100,000 in student loan debt and no prospect of ever having a job that pays above minimum wage then you may as well make some kind of statement. For some, it is the only way that they’ll ever have to express a thought or an idea as the poor may as well just become invisible.

That Tats are so popular says more about our broken culture than anything else.

DC Sunsets

Tattoos are an indication of a person who is part of the Borg Collective, entirely submerged in the hivemind.

Some people are wedded to fashion.

It borders on physically painful for them to NOT have stripes just like all the zebras around them. Such people are almost physically connected to the prevailing social mood and are essentially enslaved to it.

This is the POLAR OPPOSITE of the iconoclast, the autodidact who thinks for him- or herself.

Most people are herd animals.

DC Sunsets

“Trying to be different for the SAKE of being different is the essence of conformity.”

Drill that into every kid’s head if you don’t want to have them show up someday looking like Bozo the Clown.

DC Sunsets

@nickel

“That Tats are so popular says more about our broken culture than anything else. ”

You nailed it.

It’s called High Time Preference.

I want it, and I want it now! The future? What about it? There is no future there is ONLY THE NOW!

N8
N8

Honkey tonk across his stomach enough said.

DC Sunsets

I wonder if the guys (and some gals) who get tats intended to say, “Don’t mess with me, I’m a BAD ASS” ever realize that some other folks respond to that signal by moving several mental steps closer to drawing their concealed firearm and lining up their center of mass on the front sight.

The concealed carry civilian thinks, “Okay, you’ve succeeded in making me think that of all the people I survey, I should most have a plan to shoot YOU.”

These thoughts make me smile and shake my head at times.

Most people are herd animals.

DC Sunsets

@ Dutchman

About those BJ’s….

comment image&f=1

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

DC – You mean like this guy? His message is “shoot me, copfuk !”comment image

DC Sunsets

Iska, if he was younger (and less likely to have passed his genes to the next generation) then he’d be a wonderful candidate for a Darwin Award.

In general, it remains my view that people sporting tattoos of utter TRIVIA are wallowing in the shallow end of the gene pool.

Olga
Olga

When I was in HS I worked in my rust-belt town’s hospital kitchen [now closed] and one of the older women, a short pudgy little thing, took us HS girls into the ladies locker room, took off her uniform and she was absolutely covered in tattoos – she could wear a V-neck, short-sleeve, mid length dress and not one tat would show but underneath there was no bare skin. Solid ink – I found the whole thing very disturbing.

Of course she got all religious on us because this was done in her wild days before being saved and wouldn’t we all like to come to her church for services some time – but still – that was 1977, she had to have been in her 50’s – and she was very, very regretful.

Dutchman
Dutchman

@DC_SunSets: Good photo.

Maybe she has a “I can suck a golf ball through a garden host” inked somewhere?

Dan
Dan

I have a stupid gecko on my leg that seemed like a good idea and a very cool thing to do in 1994, now that I am older, have kids, etc….I wish it was not there. When I wear shorts I can hide it if I pull my socks way up old man style but that’s worse than the tat. I included a picture for a good example of socks being pulled way up.

comment image

Administrator

No tats on that handsome devil. High socks are going to make a comeback.

DC Sunsets

Tattoos, piercings, brands….things that can’t be undone (generally, I know there’s exceptions).

These will help contribute to the coming TSUNAMI of suicides.

Bet on it.

TE
TE

I’ve heard – from those with multiple tats – that getting inked can become an addiction.

Looks like he is thoroughly addicted. Shouldn’t the NBA be held accountable for this horrible example of manhood?

Yes, “look at me,” “hear me,” “see me,” “accept me,” conformist, while being anti-establishment at the same time. Exactly like long hair on men, and no bras for women, was during the 60s and 70s.

The tats, the hair, show the herd members that you belong. You aren’t the man – though, ironically, many of “the man” are tatted/had long hair – you aren’t parents, you aren’t the establishment.

No different in meaning, lots different in undoing it though.

Kids today don’t seem to have a grasp of the word “permanent.” What they ink on their skin, what they post on the web, risking lifetime sex offender status by sending their girl/guy naughty pics. That is a big difference between my youth and today. We knew to avoid things that were instant events and lifetime regrets. Today’s don’t seem to have the same sense.

In the 90s it was men getting their ears pierced. The first man I dated after my divorce wore an earring. My ex went out and got his ear pierced within the first month I was dating the guy. Then he called me up to tell me that he was going to get my then 7 yo son’s ear pierced.

“No your not.”
“Your boyfriend and his kid have their ears pierced”
“I didn’t do it”
“I’m going to get it done”
“Fine, do it. He’ll be back with me on Friday, by the time he gets back to you the following Friday the hole will be closed and you’ll have to shove the needle through his ear again. Every time I see an earring in my son’s ear I’m going to wait for him to go to sleep and take it out and throw it away. Every single time.”
“I hate you, your a bitch”

My son also wanted his tongue pierced when that first became popular around 2000. I provided him with tons of research showing that the #1 complication was infection – up to losing your tongue – which occurred in about 10% or more of the pierced. The #2 complication was shattered teeth. Story after story of people destroying their teeth. He passed on the piercing.

I still want a tat and since my hub said, “I’d divorce you if you get a tat,” I’ve set a personal goal for myself. Once I maintain 125lbs or less for 30 days, I’m getting a tat for myself.

When I die the coroner will be shocked, and hopefully smile, as he would be one of very, very, few that would ever know.

NickelthroweR
NickelthroweR

Greetings,

I lived Phoenix during the housing bust. As a final act of defiance, many home owners damaged their homes prior to handing the keys over to the bank. Given that the homes were made of Styrofoam, particle board and chicken wire, it didn’t take much effort to render a house pretty much useless.

Many of the people covering themselves in tattoos do so in a similar act of defiance. After all, they are debt slaves. They will never own any property nor have any real wealth. That means, given our very messed up society, that they have no tribe.

Imagine being a 20 something today with a crushing student loan debt, no job prospect, no chance to start or have a family – a miserable existence indeed! A person in that situation has nothing under control other than their own skin. I can easily see that such a person, sick of the bill collectors and desperate to contribute something decorates themselves.

Dutchman
Dutchman

So a gal walks into the tattoo parlor and asks for a tat that says: “Thanksgiving” to be inked in her right inner thigh. Next month she comes back, and asks to have “Christmas” to be inked in her left inner thing. The tattoo artist says: “May I ask why you want this?”. The gal says: “My husband always complains there’s nothing good to eat between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

B
B

Birdman just trying to be the Dennis Rodman of the new century. Some people will do anything for attention.

DC Sunsets

I told my sons while they were growing up:

“Come home with an earring and I grab and pull.
“Come home with a tattoo and I’ll remove it. There are three ways to remove a tattoo, and while I don’t own a laser, I do own a belt sander and I do own a pocket knife.”

They knew I wouldn’t actually do any of that………or would I?…….(reasonable doubt)….. hmmmmmmmm.

NONE of them got pierced or tattooed while in the “lets act like moron herd animals” stage.

Now that they’re adults, they have the PRIDE of being DIFFERENT! Different in a GOOD way, a way that says “I thought for myself!” (Even if given a little nudge by dad’s threats.)

None of them smoke, either.

They were told they were welcome to make their own stupid mistakes, but were forbidden to do anything so phenomenally, predictably self-destructive.

A man has to have standards, right?

DC Sunsets

I’m not trying to kick anyone here, I’m just saying that so few people now think for themselves that I believe there’s great pride in visibly doing so, even if the evidence is the ABSENCE of something.

Same with girls trying to dress like hookers or behave like ill-mannered, boorish young males. Show me a girl with a sweet disposition, of reasonable intelligence, who has developed a talent (like piano or photography, not hand jobs), who can carry a conversation, and likes children and I’ll show you a girl who will spend her life on Happiness Plateau if she is choosy about who she dates and ultimately marries.

What is wrong with people? This is NOT ROCKET SCIENCE.

DC Sunsets

@TE, lots of vices out there, many not so identified.

1. Cosmetic surgery.
2. Tattoos, brands, piercings.
3. Alcohol.
4. Illegal drugs (which are less bad than alcohol in terms of social costs.)
5. Abusive relationships with the opposite sex.
6. Abusive relationships with the same sex (for LGBT.)
7. Visits to doctors for many chronic complaints (I think 75% of “medical services” are because people have a self-inflicted version of Munchousen’s Syndrome by Proxy.)
8. Self-cutting.
9. Long distance running/hyperactivity with “exercise.”
10. The Democrat Party.
11. The Republican Party.
12. The Constitution, Communist, Socialist, Fabian, Green, and Libertarian Parties. (All political activity is, in my view, a vice.)

Hell, drinking too much water is bad for you, too. We humans are a self-destructive lot.

bb

If you believe the BIBLE (but who does anymore )GOD forbids tattooing on any part of your body. In ancient times the the pagan cults use tattooing as a gateway to demons gods.It was a way of showing the world which god owned them.Many times these cults would have rituals of passing through fire or in the case of Israel they put their own children in the flames as an offering.Some truly scary shit when you think about it.

El Comandante
El Comandante

AWD loved to post that pic of Mara gangsters with the tats. These idiots living in Mara camps in Central America even tattooed their kids. Morons. Poor kids look like the white guy that played Queequeg in the movie Moby Dick.

El Comandante
El Comandante

Women are visual while men are auditory, for lack of a more technical term, I never see real folks doing the horizontal mambo in my mind’s eye. But today I took a peak at TE’s proposed tat. Nice.

Leobeer
Leobeer

A nurse was telling a gorgeous co-worker about the Canadian sailor who was a patient in Ward Ten.

“He’s tattooed,” she confided in a low voice, “in a very intimate place!”

“You mean-” gasped the beautiful nurse.

“Yes! Isn’t that odd? There’s actually a word tattooed there: “Swan.'”

“This I’ve got to see,” exclaimed the voluptuous one, and she hurried off to Ward Ten.

Half an hour later, she returned. “You were right,” she said, “he is tattooed there. But the word is ‘Saskatchewan’!”

GilbertS
GilbertS

I love the big ear rings that make you look like you have a napkin ring in your ear. THOSE tell me you’re a monster douche and a complete idiot instantly. No questions asked, no other need to look for stuff to judge by. If you expanded your ear lobe like some African bushman… well, you’re an idiot. I can’t wait to see what your lack of forethought will look like in a decade, or two. I just hope they can’t reverse it with surgery or something. I want that shit permanent! Same with tattoos. I wish those were permanent, too. No lasers, no derm abrasion, or whatever. My dad used to tell me his dad said you could make any tattoo go away if you smacked a side of flaming bacon on it. I never tried to take him up on that one.

As far as I’m concerned, Maori tribesmen, soldiers, sailors, and bikers get tattoos. If you’re not Queequeg… And please, please, PUH-LEASE don’t get an oriental character on your neck. If you got to get inked, please don’t get some squiggle and tell yourself you got COURAGE because someone wrote it on you.

But I know my opinion don’t matter to you, but perhaps a little dose of reality will-My dad had tattoos from his Navy days in the 1950s (see rule above). They were a couple bluebirds because they were supposed to save you from drowning, or so I heard. After about 5 decades on his chest, they looked like they had seen better days. In fact, they looked like Silly Putty when you could slap it on the comics and then transfer the ink to the putty and stretch it out. They were all fuzzy and fading and kind of hazy. So I can only imagine how retarded the NBA white trash guy posted above will look in a few years when he’s pumping gas and hoping to do Magic Hose or Slap Chop or Tax Masters ads on TV.

GilbertS
GilbertS

Doesn’t it seem funny how many people who are otherwise poor have lots of tattoos? You see people from the FSA and they’re wallpapered with tats.
Also, where I live, a lot of black people have tats. Now that’s fine, do what you want (refer to my rule above), but I gotta ask-doesn’t it seem sort of like a waste of money to get a tat on dark skin nobody can see from more than 3 paces away? And why get your name, or someone’s name, in cursive on your neck or the back of your calf? Every so often, I catch a glimpse of this woman who shaves her head and has the entire area where her hair was tattooed with a giant black, red, orange, and yellow butterfly. I almost laugh out loud in the parking lot when I see her.

DC Sunsets

@ GilbertS,

Yeah, my dad had a Devil Dog tattoo from his USMC days in WW2.

By the time he died at 89 it was unrecognizable. Things people do when they’re so young that they can’t imagine the people they may become in 5 years, much less 25.

Now, I look back and I’m related to the “me” of 35 years ago only by a concatenation of days. The seeds of who I am were there back then, but the “me” today would have been completely alien to the “me” back then.

Today most people are children, and children live their lives in the Perpetual Now.

El Comandante
El Comandante

bb, did you say we are in some age of dispensation? i don’t understand all that, i really know very little about hermeneutics or apologetics, my opinion is such things are not a bar to salvation. you may see a lot of tattooed folks going straight to heaven. did you ever read the verse that says, men see what is before them but god looks at the heart?

Americans as a group are convinced they are going to heaven. that’s a popular delusion, maybe they think it’s in the bill of rights. the bible says at the judgement, folks will be judged according to their works and their thoughts will convict them. . the early xtians at jamestown knew this, they said, no work, no food. the bible agrees, it says religion without works is dead. the new covenant doesn’t say anything about tats, unless we apply: all things are possible for god (even the gays I bitch about).

bb

El Comandante , I agree .People with tattooing can go to heaven but GOD still forbids the practice because now like before it’s can be a gateway to evil spirits. Much like GOD for forbids talking to the dead or practicing witchcraft because it leds to evil.It also provokes God’s wrath. I know a guy who was into Hinduism . He says the meditation they practice leads to evil spirits but now he is a Christian.

KaD
KaD

I remember a story about a guy who got a tattoo and then decided he didn’t like it; so he got drunk and used a Dremel to remove it.

El Comandante
El Comandante

bb, you reminded me; folks are not to get a barcode tattooed on their hands or forehead for the purpose of complying with government regulations to get an ebt card.

BOOSH!
BOOSH!

I have long said that tattoos are now a way of life……however, more than 4-5 or one big piece is simply the poison in their bodies escaping……..the more tattoos the greater the mental illness……what ever that illness is……..daddy didn’t hug me enough, nobody likes me, etc……….major tattoos means they are not mentally equipped to deal with life…………….I’ve seen guys with well over $2,500 worth of tattoo art on calfs and forearms at “back to school backpack days” ………the FSA getting free shit because they’d rather spend their money on tattoos, showing the world how fucked up they are………………I would never date a woman with more than 2 tattoos, even if just to bang her……because the mess that a bitch like that would cause isn’t worth the headache.
Remember: tattoo ink=poison that is in a person’s life……..take a good look at the art that is on somebody that is sleaved or more…….skulls and all kinds of fucked up shit……….it is a warning sign that they have issues that they are incapable of dealing with……….

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