The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization has decided to make people who look bad feel bad, too. In the UK, a fifth of people have a tattoo and, according to new research, this means they are impulsive decision-makers and poor strategists. Well duh, as the 17-year-old pop star Billie Eilish would say. Her first tattoo was the signature of the tattoo artist Jonboy on her foot. I’ll just leave that detail there.
The idea that tattooed people are reckless, feckless and unable to make simple projections into the future strikes me as true. I have a full sleeve so ugly that even people who are intrigued by its edges offer a moue of sympathy when faced with the whole mucky splodge. I got it for no reason and it doesn’t mean anything. If all of inked humanity stood side by side, our tattoos would join up and form the giant phrase “DUMB IDEA” visible from space.
When I see tattooed people, I experience a shimmer of feeling: another prat like me. Another nobody who was bored, or acting out some kind of self-harm, or wanted to look like a rock star. Another basic blunder. It has been interesting to observe the steady creep from genteel conversations about whether to get “a little something” on the ankle or the back of the shoulder to a full cladding that reaches down the backs of the hands and up the sides of the neck.
I go to a lot of sporting events where humanity is on full, sweaty display in all its inked glory. There is no design, style or tattoo aesthetic that does not look totally twattacious after a few years. Even the current trend for tiny, scattered thin-line abstracts all over the body, which look delicate and beautiful, will soon appear passé.
Certainly, the preceding trend for ironic, heavy, sailor-style tattoos up and down the legs and arms got old pretty fast. However it starts, a tattoo ends up a blurred, inky blue mess.
I do think that, given the prevalence of tattoos and the fact that we are clearly not all triads, sailors, Russian convicts, circus freaks or gang members – I mean, I wish! – prejudices about tattooed people in public life ought to reduce. The study’s findings that people with visible tattoos are considered less qualified and receive fewer job interview callbacks and lower starting salaries certainly tallies with my experience, or I wouldn’t be living at home at the age of 41 earning less than £10,000 a year, 26 years into my career. It also evidently makes a lady less attractive, or (barring one mistake) I wouldn’t have been celibate since … oh. Since the summer I got the tattoo.
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