In a world where we can’t commit to a phone for more than two years, millions of us are totally cool with etching permanent art onto our bodies.
Sounds weird when put that way, right?
Tattoos used to be for sailors, prisoners, and rebels. Now your tax accountant probably has a half-sleeve hidden under that button-up shirt.
What changed?
Humans have been marking their bodies since we figured out how to sharpen sticks and make pigment. From Ötzi the Iceman’s 61 tattoos (dating back 5,200 years) to your regrettable spring break dolphin on your ankle, we’ve been doing this forever.
But why?
Tattoos are tribal signaling on steroids
We’re social creatures desperate to belong. Tattoos used to clearly mark who was in your tribe: the military unit, the prison gang, the counterculture. Now they’re both more personal and more universal.
That rose on your forearm? It’s simultaneously saying “I’m unique” and “I’m part of the tattooed tribe.” It’s both rebellion and conformity wrapped into one painful, expensive package.
The permanence paradox
In our disposable, swipe-right culture, tattoos are a middle finger to impermanence. They’re a commitment in an age that hates commitment.
The irony? We’re using permanent marks to decorate temporary bodies. No matter how good the blackwork on your chest looks now, eventually it’s going into the ground with you.
Maybe that’s the point.
Pain as authenticity
We live in an increasingly digital, sanitized world. Getting a tattoo hurts. It bleeds. It scabs. It’s raw and unavoidably physical.
In a world of fake news and filters, tattoos can’t be faked. The pain is the authentication process – proof you’ve invested something real in your identity.
What your tattoo is really saying
Your tattoo tells a story.
The most honest tattoos acknowledge they’re more about capturing who you were when you got them than who you’ll always be.
The billion-dollar authenticity industry
Funny how rebellion gets packaged and sold back to us. Tattoos are now a massive industry with celebrity artists, reality shows, and Instagram influencers.
We’ve commercialized counterculture, which is the most American thing ever.
So should you get one?
If you want my advice (which you probably don’t), get the tattoo. Or don’t.
But if you do, understand what you’re really buying: not just art, but membership, permanence in impermanence, physical authenticity, and a snapshot of who you are right now.
Just maybe skip the lower back tribal design😭
Joe DiAndrea 