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Globalisation? Multiculturisation? Or just fashion?  What's made tattoos so popular?

When I was in my teens, so we're talking about back in the 1970s here,  there were very few stereotypes of people who had tattoos.  There was a generation of men who had probably fought in the war - they joined the forces, they got a tattoo.  They were all what would generally be called working class, and they were all in their fifties or thereabouts, and they tended to use Brylcreem on their hair, or what was left of it.  The tattoos were invariably on their arms - usually, the forearms.  Sometimes, there were younger lads who had words tattooed onto their hands or their fingers.  These gave the impression of having done the work themselves.  LOVE or HATE tattooed across the fingers, making me think of someone with a pot of permament ink and a pair of compasses in a frenzy of self-abuse.  Sometimes, the name of a girlfriend who had long since disappeared into the ether, or someone else's bed, or whatever.

That was it.  And given that tattooing was relatively selective, you made a link in your head between tattoos and fifty-something ex servicemen and young hardnuts who thought it was a good idea to maim themselves in maths lessons, or as a way of trying to shag some girl they fancied by appearing to be completely hooked.  And the idea, back then, of a woman having a tattoo, well, she would also have worn an ankle bracelet and we all knew what that meant.

So, those were the stereotypes that I learned to associate with tattoos.  

And, unfortunately, I still do.

I have to remember though that, in the last thirty or forty years, there has been a lot of "multiculturalisation" in the UK.  So what that means is that ideas from other cultures have arrived here.  Nose piercing, for example.  Back in the seventies of eighties, the only people you saw with their nose pierced were people from the Indian subcontinent.  Pierced ears were, of course quite normal, but piercings actually on your face were not.  And from that, we moved into other areas, pierced eyebrows, pierced lips.  But tattoos, it seems to me, aren't from other cultures.  They came from here.

The good news about most fashions is that you can leave them behind afterwards.  In 1975, I had the most amazing pair of platform shoes, they were orange and chestnut brown leather, with stacked plastic heels which were probably all of two inches high.  I wore them with a pair of trousers which were made of enough material to make a two-man tent.  30 inch flared corduroys.  It makes me cringe a little now to imagine myself.  The good news is that, once that fashion had passed, I chucked them away,  bought some Levis and a few black T-shirts and cheesecloth shirts, some Dunlop tennis shoes, and that did me for the next two years.  I didn't have to wear those horrible platform shoes again.  They weren't part of me.

Fast forward to the first time I saw David Beckham running out onto a pitch with a tattoo across the back of his neck.  My immediate thought was "you plonker", but then I realised that actually, he was probably going to be the next generation of those fifty-something war veterans.  Apart from the odd middle-eastern skirmish,  the only real wars fought by the English in the nineties and noughties were those on a sports field of one sort or another.  I thought that this would probably be a cult limited to these modern day warriors, the sportsmen who fight it out in the civilised version of war.    But then, a year or two later, the idea that tattoos were cool had clearly taken hold.  And thanks to certain female models getting them, they suddenly became things that young women wanted too, they suddenly became extremely fashionable.

I am one of those people who want to scream "NO!! DON'T DO IT!!" But of course, who is going to listen to me, a fifty-something year-old bloke who clearly knows nothing about life these days?  I've given up even imagining how these tattoos will look in their later years.  What really puts me off, and what, if I was twenty something now would put me off, is the sight of that beautifully smooth young skin polluted by a tattoo.  I just don't understand it, and I don't think I ever will.  Maybe it's attractive to guys of the same age?  I don't know, if I was them, I would just find it a complete turn-off. 

I read a book a few years back, from one of my long-time favourite authors - John Irving.  The book was "Until I find You" which is broadly about a woman who moves around Europe with her young son trying to track down her missing husband / partner.  He had a thing for tattoos and is practically covered in them.  She is a tattooist.  By the end of the book, I had almost got to a sympathetic viewpoint - I could almost understand why people would want to do that to themselves, but then the next time I saw someone with some obtrusive tattoos, I realised that I still found them pretty ugly and I just didn't understand the attraction at all.

And when I read of people with very obvious tattoos giving their opinion that their appearance should in no way affect their chances of getting a job, like it is some form of disability, or equality issue, I start to feel my blood come to the boil.  I'm not going any further down that line, I just think they must be completely nuts.

So, I can say categorically that I am going to arrive at St Peter's gates without any ink decorating my skin.  

How about you?