Tattoos: Do they know they're permanent?

From Ancient Maori and Aztec rites to a way for Angelina to keep track of exactly where she picked up each of her kids, tattoos have played a long and important role in human history, but the other day I saw something that made me wonder if maybe, just maybe, it was a bad idea to introduce ‘the perpetual art’ to this fickle, modish generation hooked on instant gratification and the next, best look.
We’ve all heard the stories about the girl who wanted a sexy, pouncing lynx tattoo and wound up with a malignant-looking blob, or the guy who asked for funky Chinese characters which marked him forever as “a very unattractive boy”. There’ve always been risks in getting ‘inked’ (part of the reason for many countries’ prohibition on tattoo parlours servicing anyone who’s consumed alcohol in the 24 hours prior to visiting), but the greatest risk is the one that will befall them all: with age, it’ll just look crap!
The ink will fade, the edges will blur, the skin will stretch and sag. In short: if you go under the needle, what you get today, even if it looks good now, will not be what you have in twenty years time. Now, in saying that, I’m clearly demonstrating the sort of forethought and appreciation for consequences which make it unlikely that I’ll ever belong to the sort of crowd where tattoos are mandatory, but it also means that in 20 years time I’m not looking for the best way – short of amputation – to con my health insurer into paying for laser removal.
What got me thinking all this was a young guy, twenty-three or so, who’d clearly had an illustrious career as a front-rower: he had calves the size of my torso, and down one entire flank was a huge, black rectangle. A great slab of ink, with perfectly straight sides and exact, right-angled corners on what was otherwise an impressively chunky, slightly spotty canvas. It was awesomely stupid! And yet, so intriguing: maybe it was a critique on the meaninglessness of modern tattoo culture. Maybe it was an homage to Stanley Kubrick’s monolith. Maybe it was covering up an embarrassing, earlier foray, or perhaps he was going to rent it out as a billboard in rugby season. Maybe he just really liked rectangles.
Of course, by now he’d noticed me ogling his calf. “You like it?” he asked, and I said “yes”, because no matter how silly it looked, one flex could cause me a lot of pain. “Yeah,” he grinned with real pride, “I like it. Big!”
One of those ‘there but for a pair of frontal lobes go I’-type moments. But he’s happy, and that counts, but will it count for enough when he starts trading his incredible muscle bulk for something a little less taught? Or when he learns to distinguish his left leg from his right without visual aids?
Perhaps the 24 hour/no drink policy is insufficient. Maybe tattooists should also be required to show a computer simulation of what that tat is going to look like later in life; or maybe a regulatory body where you have to submit your desired design and a member of the Queer Eye team is legally empowered to bitch slap you if your idea is offensive, stupid or…well, mostly stupid. And maybe that same body could be extended to every part of your “look”, from where you shop to how you dress each day, because maybe the fascists were right and there are just some decisions too important, and some people too stupid to go deciding things for themselves.