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 �what is Man? a miserable little pile of secrets.� - andr� malraux "i desire to live in peace and to continue the life i have begun under the motto, to live well you must live unseen." - rene descartes note random entry image credit design by : ilazarn ikmal powered by : diaryland |
on being tattooed/modified people:
2012-11-27 @ 10:24 a.m.
this morning i was looking at fb and it said that the artist list was coming together for the philly tattoo convention, which we ended up missing last year. i started looking at the list, trying to find shops in NJ that boy and i could try out, but ... not a single one of them is on par with our current guy. so of course, the thought was, "dammit!" but i'm happy that our guy is close enough that we can drive there and back in a single day, that the shop has an amazing atmosphere that is not uncomfortable AT ALL, and that we get amazing prices because we're friends. so every time i start thinking, man, it's such a drive! i do remember that it's a worthwhile tradeoff for all of the benefits. still, that doesn't make the 5+ hours of driving any more enjoyable (on the way there, exhausted. on the way home, sore and exhausted). then the other thought i had. we went to michael's to grab some thread on sunday and the girl ringing us up looked at boy's hands (which are tattooed), and says, "did that hurt!?" not like he's not asked that AT LEAST once every single time we go somewhere, so he says his usual, "which part?" and the girl says, your hands? he replies, well yeah! tattoos already hurt, and the hands are pretty painful. and the girl is like, "yeah, my husband wanted to get his hands tattooed too, and i was like, 'eww!'" when we left, boy was like what the fuck? eww? how would that girl have liked it if i'd said, "i know, i was just thinking that about your face!" i guess there's a perception among some people that if you're highly, visibly tattooed, that you're making a spectacle of yourself and are therefore "public property" (i seriously just read that somewhere, while googling blog posts about this topic). some people feel that it is perfectly acceptable to approach someone and criticize their appearance. you know, how it's also perfectly okay to walk up to a pregnant woman and touch her without asking and generally do the same thing (that was sarcasm; it's not). but like seriously? i TOTALLY understand why people will walk up, ask questions, whatever. and that's cool! but saying, "ew! that's disgusting! why would you ruin/disfigure/mutilate your body like that!?" why would you ... say something like that to a stranger? how would you feel if someone said that about anything that you may have going on? your haircut? your outfit? your WEIGHT? i feel that pregnancy is disgusting and disfiguring, and i don't like it, so by their logic it's totally cool for me to walk up to a pregnant woman and say things like that? walk up to a fat person and say, "ugh, why are you DOING that? you look disgusting!" (i used this as an example even though i know that people do this to fat people all the time, but it still doesn't make it right.) i don't understand the logic here. sometimes i feel as though life is an old looney tunes cartoon or something. "i don't like the looks of ya," said with a squinty eye and one raised eyebrow. it's like, while we're at it, i just don't like the look of black/latino/asian people. i'm just going to walk up to one and tell them they disgust me. oh, people don't do that anymore, because it's not fucking 1950? the memo finally circulated that surprise, everyone is still PEOPLE? what the fuck, sometimes! i totally get it. tattooed people are a symbol of societal deviance, they're a symbol of a person who must be at least a little masochistic, they're a symbol of recklessness, danger, rebellion, you name it. but are people so blinded by what's on your skin that they completely forget that there's a person under there? (probably, yes.) on one of these blog posts i was reading, a commenter said, "i think it's all about fear." some people see this strange, threatening figure, and their kneejerk reaction is to confront it, attack it, and make it less threatening. so this turned into another long thing that was supposed to only be these couple of things, but this is something that drives me nuts. people say things like, "well herp derp, you did it to yourself! get used to it! shouldn't have gotten tattoos if you didn't want people to say things!" and while i agree with that like 75% (yes, those are all correct statements), that last part, "shouldn't have gotten tattoos if you didn't want people to say things" should not extend to saying rude, abusive things. no one - no matter what! - signs up for that. boy and i both decided that next time some jackass has something rude and thoughtless to say that we're going to reply in kind to try to make them feel as uncomfortable as possible. i hate to even think of being like this, but if at least one person reflects on the experience and stops being that ignorant stranger, then i would consider it worth the hurt feelings it would cause. ps: one of my results from google was from a discussion forum on which the OP asked: "are tattooed persons more likely to rape or murder my child?" SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH |