by Wilton Alston
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thelibertarianstandard/~3/n3pUuSQy008/
The more I think about it, the less respect I have for the trite, and supposedly pragmatic, attack some people make on tattoos. It goes something like this: “How will that look when you’re 80?”
Basically, who gives a rat’s ass?
My suspicion is that by the time one gets to 80 years old, other areas of concern–like pooping regularly without help and figuring out whence that scratchy hair in strange places came–will dominate. You won’t be worried about whether or not your Celtic Cross still looks just as good as it used to!
The condition of your tats, and frankly, what anyone else thinks about how they look, won’t be in the Top 25 Things About Which to Worry. On top of that, let’s say you got that tattoo at 30. I submit that 50+ years of enjoyment ain’t too bad. Of course, YMMV.
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Er… I don’t doubt the right to get a tattoo done, but tattoos are the preserve of chavs. There is nothing in libertarianism to say that low cultural standards MUST be preferred – only that people who have low cultural standards need their space in life just the same as “normal people”.
“How will that look when you’re 80?” is not an “attack” on people who wear tattoos. It’s an aesthetic judgement and has nothing to do with libertarianism.
I remember upsetting everyone over at Samizdata back in the day by saying I rather like the lower back tattoo known as a “tramp stamp”. So much so that, unusually even for Samizdata, the comments of myself and a couple of others got deleted 🙂
But then, my salad days (if I had any) were during the mid-80s psychedelic/goth/alternative crossover scene (you may remember Doctor And The Medics’s one hit-wonder Spirit In The Sky topping the hit parade),
…mmmmmm…. girls with colourful big hair and spray on jeans and celtic-y tattoos…
so I might have a slightly different cultural perspective to DJ Webb, whose salad days appear to have been lived in one of Hannah More’s correctional tracts.
Anyway, I’m inclined to agree with the author of the piece. Tempus fugit. Carpe diem.
Carthago delenda est! Marcus et canis ambulat in via!
Ambulant!
My two years at a minor public school’s prep school were a very long time ago, Sean :oD
Speaking personally, I don’t really like tattoos unless they are there for authentic reasons. This is to say: on the arms and biceps of British Young Men who have been soldiers and then become British Middle-Aged-Men with arm-tattoos.
It is quite correct, and perfectly unofficially OK and allowed, for _//male//_ British soldiers below the rank of 2nd-Lt (but not including that rank or any above) to have tattoos – as many as they want, and of any subject that’s not Chinese and unintelligible otherwise, on their upper and lower arms, biceps and upper backs. Skulls….dragons…Mercury-snakes…girlfriends’ names….the Regimental Mascot…whatever. All is allowed.
This is forgivable, when you are in a Foreign Land, such as Cyprus or Afghanistan, and have got a bit (which is to say: rather) drunk, and have shagged a few pretty ladies that night, and you go to get tattooed to show you are a “one-of-the-blokes”.
It is unsuitable to have a woman tattooed.
I don’t like “tramp stamps” on women, Ian. It means that she accidentally “lost her grip” at one moment in her total life, which indicates that she is “light”. Or likely to be.
Sorry to sound so “certain” about things. I just am, being so old.
“Unsuitable”? Hmm.
It’s a class thing. Ruling classes always seek to define themselves by things they do and things they don’t do; clothes, food, hairstyles, giant wigs, absurd lace collars that make their head look like it’s decapitated on a plate, all manner of nonsense. Having differentiated themselves from the lower class by such sumptuary measures, they then look down on different sumptuary forms as “lower class”. Hey ho. As I’ve often said, having sampled the various classes I prefer the lower one. The class we currently call “middle” as a euphemism for “upper” repel me; their monstrous, shrieking women and pathetic, ineffectual males. I’ve no time for them. I’d march the lot o them to Beachy Head and tell them to keep walking.
^^^Above comment may violate this blog’s AUP.
I’ve never understood the appeal of jewellery. Poke a hole in yourself and dangle some metal off it? Makes you more attractive to have stuff hanging off and clanging around your ears? Doesn’t work for me. I find the whole thing, like the Middle Class, mildly repulsive. But we know why it’s done; demonstrating your wealth. That bit of metal, it’s expensive. Look, I am wealthy, see my gold! You are not, see your tin and plastic from Argos!
But, makes no sense to me, jewellery.
Some nice graphic design on the other hand, I can appreciate that. If that makes me a chav, I’m glad. Better that than the class of the Blairs and the Camerons, by far.
I do rather like the old aristocracy though. Flashy clothes, ostentatious stately homes, gaudy coaches, pomp and a smattering of circumstance. They knew how to enjoy themselves. But they’re gone now, and their descendant remnant are “Middle Class” as well now, which is a bit sad.
Ah, the pierced jewellery-thing! Wasn’t it about sailors having a bit of gold in their ear, so that when they handed in their dinner pail, you could use it to pay to bury them properly? That’s what I was taught, anyway…
But perhaps not, and it was always ostentation of some kind. “I’ve pillaged the bodies of more (innocent-sea-going-passengers) than you have, squire!”
But I insist: it is simply not suitable to tattoo a woman. It just is not. So there. Just like putting them in military uniform: that is equally unsuitable, and makes them look like women dressed up to look like men, and that is the least bad part of it too.