Whenever I express hostility towards the tattoo culture that’s engulfed America, I am mocked as an uptight Boomer who couldn’t possibly understand the transgressive thrill of having my skin injected with ink. Now I hate to break the news to them, but if you’re part of a group that encompasses 30-something percent of Americans, you don’t exactly belong to an exclusive subculture. You’re just a conformist. If you were interested in defying society’s expectations, you’d get a STEM degree and put on a tie. And you’d be a lot happier for it.
Many contemporary trends make me feel old. This one, though, makes me feel smart. Because over the past few years, I’ve noticed an increasing number of 50- and 60-year-olds marked with horrendous tattoos — or, more precisely, elaborate ink smudges. Distinguished middle-aged men and women will lift their arms at the supermarket or a baseball game and reveal once-vibrant spiderwebs or flocks of birds that are now little more than unrecognizable doodles. You will never be able to stay in good enough shape to make that canvas work, my friend. Nature simply won’t have it.
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