Monday, April 17, 2017

Hailey's Novel Diary – 4/17/17

What I know about tattoos could fill a postage stamp. I don't care what anyone else does with their body, but I have always considered the idea of a tattoo crazy. It's like picking out a necklace, but you have to wear that necklace every day for the rest of your life. The style you like now might look ugly and terribly outdated in a few years. The only way to take it off is with painful lasers or piling on more tattoo ink.

What I really don't understand are tattoos on your back or some place that you can never see. I guess it would be good to not have that constant reminder, but then what is the point?

There is no way to talk about this without some tattoo fan getting morally outraged, so I will repeat that I don't care what anyone else does with their body. If you like tattoos, great. Go nuts.

Right now, the big trend is getting phrases stabbed into your arm or abdomen or wherever. That seems even worse than a flower to me. A sentence that you might find inspirational, deep, funny or clever might sound stupid at a later point in your life. Or you will see the same sentence on a million other people and it will not seem so edgy or creative anymore. Or you will simply get tired of reading it every single day.

The tattoos I like are when people get Chinese characters without being able to read a word of Chinese. I actually saw someone with “stupid foreigner” tattooed on their arm. I don't know what they were told it meant, but I doubt they knew the truth.

A few of the characters in this book have tattoos. It makes sense that they would. It's a hip trend these days. But writing about getting a tattoo does not work when the author knows nothing about getting a tattoo. Watching Popeye cartoons does not help.

Looking at a million pictures of tattoos, it's clear to me that some of this “art” really is art. Some of these people who tear ink into other people's flesh really know what they are doing. Like anything else, I'm sure it takes a lot of practice to do well. But if it is art, why put it over your butt? How often are you going to look at that?


"prostitute"

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