Amerika

N.B.: at some point, I will say something that offends your personal fiction-absolute. I apologize in advance. I must point out some things and then knit them together later, and not all of my opinions are ones that I like, only things I observe.

Recently a nice conservative woman wrote a piece on Daily Wire about how conservatives should embrace tattoo culture — this was at the time the Nancy Mace tattoo story dropped — because we need to be more hip and in touch with the counterculture.

In a classic conservative parody however they are thirty years behind. Tattoos — except for sailors and metalheads — were really hip starting in the late 1990s and became commonplace in the 2010s. But now people are backing away.

It is easy to see why people want to get one: in a sea of flesh, at least you can make your statement, like wearing a brand name or band shirt, and not be exactly like everyone else. This was a very 1990s “pluralism” fixation, and the world has grown past it.

To me, tattoos represent an attempt to freeze time. You want to capture that moment and what you were feeling then and immortalize it, but life is arcs and curves more than stop-motion linear events. Therefore it never feels satisfying.

It was, back then, a form of rebellion, but that went out the windows once most people you ran into on the street had elaborate sleeves. It was a sort of luxury spending on the self, kind of like going to one of those gyms where they bring you a steamed toward.

Tattooing is self-graffiti and self-destruction. Instead of trusting in nature and your body, you are trying to dominate it (metaphysical autosodomy) and convert it into a purely human expression. But you are already human; what more do you need?

(Again, there is a carveout for metalheads and sailors here.)

Some think that the process of tattooing proves their manliness or power. However, since every other woman and spindly hipster has tattoos, that theory went out the window. Others wanted “personal” mementos, but if they are so personal, why are they visible?

The ugly theory that reappears in my mind after a few drinks is that tattoos are there to signal that you have broken from hope. You no longer believe you can have an immaculate chaste and lovely life, so you are making yourself look like the city walls, covered in graffiti.

They scream out “psychological child abuse” more than “sexual child abuse,” but daddy issues seem prominent too. Tattoos mean that you have chosen a path of distraction rather than a path of self-improvement.

Some might find it odd, but the only real bravery seen these days is the ability to come up with something useful and follow it through. Very few can do this, so they all have these proxies for guts that shout out alienation, self-doubt, and ironist contrarianism, like all other prole activities.

Tags: tattoos