For my 18th birthday, I was sent money from a relative (I won’t say which one) along with a note that said:
“Go get a tattoo before anyone talks you out of it.”
I didn’t even have pierced ears. I was not a rebellious person, and I was still at the point where if someone I trusted told me to do something, I’d do it.
So, I got a black rose tattoo 6 inches below my shoulder. On the front (not back.)
It was really awesome actually. Done very well.
My boyfriend hated it.
(That made me happy – it was an external manifestation of something that was within me that was just for me.)
He would do elaborate things to cover it up – shawls, sweaters, etc. And then he started to accept it. And we got engaged.
(And broke up.)
The man I did marry also hated it. However, he had a different proposition for me.
He said:
“You got that when you were 18, rather than being someone who has a tattoo when they are old, how about you get it removed after 15 years?”
I agreed, and I had it for the first 10 years of our marriage. He would make comments about it every now and then, but he’d know it would be gone one day.
When I did remove it, with one treatment left I saw something really cool happened – the green coloring that was once inside the leaves was all that remained. It is faint, but beautiful.
And, utterly impossible to recreate – the only way I could have the tattoo I have now is by once having had a tattoo and having had it mostly removed. And even then, the likelihood that it would have gotten this exact pattern isn’t high.
So, yes, there are intellectuals with tattoos, and we tend to intellectuallize them too.
As for the study, I believe you are referring to this one[1] .
Footnotes
[1] Who gets tattoos? Demographic and behavioral correlates of ever being tattooed in a representative sample of men and women.
Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-intellectual-people-with-tattoos-What-patterns-have-behavioral-scientists-found-about-people-with-tattoos
Originally Posted On: 2016-04-02