Tattoos are getting easier to remove. Estimates: Up to 45 million Americans are tattooed; 17 percent of them regret it; the annual number of tattoo removal treatments might be 100,000. Summary by a removal company's CEO: "As your life changes from young to middle-aged to older, from single to married to divorced, you get tattoo regret." Sample reasons: 1) Get my ex-fiance's name off my body. 2) I don't want my tattoos to show around my strapless wedding gown. 3) I need to start looking employable and marriageable. 4) I want to replace my old tattoos with new ones. Current removal technology: multiple expensive laser treatments to break down each color. Impending technology: special ink that can be removed with a single laser treatment. CEO's pitch: The new ink will embolden "fence-sitters who always wanted a tattoo but have been afraid of the permanence." Half-cynical view: It'll make them feel as though they're getting a real tattoo when, in fact, they aren't. Fully cynical view: Removable tattoos for the era of removable relationships."
In today's world, obsolescence dominates. Hot one moment, gone the next, it seems that nothing these days has any permanence: not our goals, not our toys (as the only thing we can seemingly count on is that our new "technologies" our outdated the moment we receive them), not our relationships (see divorce statistics). Even the tattoo, what was once the ultimate symbol of permanent commitment, can now be edited right out of existence.
The question is, is anything sacred? Do we every commit to anything anymore for the long haul? And if the answer is no, what consequences are we suffering?
1 comment:
I don't know if this will make tatoos more or less popular... At some point down the line people might think of tatoos as a piece of fashion. You know, a rose on the bicep this week and a chinese character on the back the next.
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