there's freedom in covering your body with nonsense

October 16, 2016 1:21 PM

i'm not hiding anymore, fam. some asshole at a reading a couple years ago was like, "lol japanese wave tattoo!?" and for a split second i felt stupid and almost apologetic but wait: HELLO, SON. I AM OLD. and while i hope that tiny hipster mustache etched permanently into the side of your finger remains au courant forever, i'm smart enough to know it won't and that you better start thinking up the cutesy story to explain it away at parties now. because in ten years when 3D face tattoos are the wave and the girls you're trying to bone are all, "ew...mustache?" you're going to feel this exact same shame and hopefully by that point my aquarius constellation tattoo and i will be cackling up at you from the ninth circle of hell.

Samantha Irby previously.

Irby's essay collection and blog served as the inspiration for a half-hour comedy series, which was co-written with Jessi Klein and recently picked up for development by FX. Meaty will be executive produced by Irby, Klein, and Abbi Jacobson (previously).

posted by amnesia and magnets (55 comments total)

the seemingly random fluorescent bolding is a little distracting
posted by automatizing nihilist vortex at 1:25 PM on October 16, 2016 [10 favorites]

I am forever grateful that my friends talked me out of getting eyeballs tattoed on my palms back in 1996.
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:35 PM on October 16, 2016 [13 favorites]

Those don't sound like real friends. Real friends would get matching eyeball palm tattoos.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 1:37 PM on October 16, 2016 [78 favorites]

And whenever u high five ur eyeball hand tat friends u call it seeing eye to eye
posted by boo_radley at 1:48 PM on October 16, 2016 [72 favorites]

I liked this a lot. Embrace your tattoos as indicators of who and where you were at the time. Or get them reworked, which to me is about bringing who-and-where-I-was-then into better harmony with who-and-where-I-am-now. I'm currently looking at getting two pieces reworked, both because I now wish I'd gone bigger, bolder, and more colorful.

But anyone who sneers at somebody else's tattoo deserves fart noises and rude gestures.
posted by Lexica at 1:51 PM on October 16, 2016 [22 favorites]

That is funny shit.

In the 80's we thought weird old tattoos were the coolest, they had history. New tattoos were kind of embarrassing. It's hilarious in a way to see our culture shift to the idea that you should have tasteful, expensive tattoos. There is nothing that can't become classist.
posted by bongo_x at 2:00 PM on October 16, 2016 [22 favorites]

My friend and I just got "schwifty" tattooed on the inside of our lower lips. A++ would make every bad (read: awesome) decision all over again.
posted by hototogisu at 2:02 PM on October 16, 2016 [13 favorites]

Fortunately all four of my shitty 90s tattoos are on my thighs and typical-male-length shorts cover them just fine. (Tribal, celtic, two animals.)
posted by AFABulous at 2:11 PM on October 16, 2016

Some of my favorite tattoos are the utterly arbitrary ones that fly in the face of the idea that tattoos must be Deep and Personal and Meaningful, e.g. My friend has this stick and poke dot on her thigh that when she's going through the whole tattoo bearing ice breaker routine you'll be like "oh cool what's that about?" and she'll explain "I dunno I was bored in the high school bathroom and we were going for something more extensive but the bell rang and we had to get to class"
posted by Gymnopedist at 2:13 PM on October 16, 2016 [7 favorites]

My tattoos are all some version of bad decisions (one has remained unfinished for over a decade lol) and I just can't bring myself to care. They are all pretty representative of who I was and what I was doing with myself at the time, none of which I regret, so I'm happy to live with the increasingly smeary, unfinished reminders. I'm kind of increasingly smeary and unfinished myself, so it's cool.

I did have a friend in college who had the ultimate in fake-kanji high school trip to the shore badness in a pretty visible location, and he wound up becoming a scholar of classical Chinese. I sometimes wonder if he got that thing removed or covered or if he just rocks it when he's at conferences.
posted by soren_lorensen at 2:18 PM on October 16, 2016 [12 favorites]

I can't get tattoos because I'm prone to forming keloids one of which is this large, sort of stretched out ugly looking scar thingie across half my chest, another one is this sort of lima bean growing out of my left ear where I used to have an earing.
So my genetics preclude my right to make bad decisions.
posted by signal at 2:27 PM on October 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

I guess this is a good enough place to ask, are 5-pointed stars specifically a gay male thing? Or were they a few years ago?
posted by AFABulous at 2:36 PM on October 16, 2016

All I know is that when people use old-timey fonts for their tattoos I can never read what the hell they are. So I pretend it is Latin.
posted by srboisvert at 2:49 PM on October 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

A friend of a friend (who is a tattoo artist himself) has a party trick where you tell him what your tattoo is of and he tells you what year you got it in. Usually gets it pretty close.
posted by nebulawindphone at 2:56 PM on October 16, 2016 [44 favorites]

I think it's really interesting how tattoo styles change and evolve over time, like trends in art or clothing.
posted by Lycaste at 3:16 PM on October 16, 2016

I guess this is a good enough place to ask, are 5-pointed stars specifically a gay male thing? Or were they a few years ago?

They were v popular w late-90s club kids/ravers around here
posted by griphus at 3:28 PM on October 16, 2016 [6 favorites]

TRIBAL
posted by gottabefunky at 3:36 PM on October 16, 2016

What's the current status of tattoo removal? Can you more or less get them erased now? There are billboards all over Portland (OR).
posted by gottabefunky at 3:38 PM on October 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh man this is great. Im not a big tattoo fan but my aunt has a tweety bird on her big toe which I thought was the EPITOME of cool at age 11.
posted by pintapicasso at 3:45 PM on October 16, 2016 [4 favorites]

What's the current status of tattoo removal?

Sort of like vasectomies, in that removal/reversal is considerably more expensive and painful than getting it in the first place; the technology hasn't quite caught up to the need for cheap and easy removal of poor decisions.

e.g. My friend has this stick and poke dot on her thigh that when she's going through the whole tattoo bearing ice breaker routine you'll be like "oh cool what's that about?" and she'll explain "I dunno I was bored in the high school bathroom and we were going for something more extensive but the bell rang and we had to get to class"

I have one of those, though not done at school. I've had it for so long that I forget it is there except when someone notices it and asks. I need to come up with some kind of better story than "I was a bored teenager with a needle and a jar of india ink."
posted by Dip Flash at 3:47 PM on October 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

Also, I was disappointed that the colored text in the article was not links to photos.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:52 PM on October 16, 2016 [15 favorites]

I've had my tattoo for a couple of decades, and I can't say I've ever regretted it. I kind of forget it's there. however, and so I am occasionally startled by it in the mirror, but, hey, it keeps life fresh.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:58 PM on October 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

I saw one of my favorite tattoos on a server's shoulder in a brewpub. It was a simple paddle in black ink, with a year, the name of a river, and an impressive number of miles. I think I liked it so much because she was proud of who she was, or at least what she accomplished, at the time she got it.

I don't know if she'll ever regret it--but I wouldn't. If she ever beats her record she can always add another paddle, which would make it even cooler.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:25 PM on October 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

When I went to a local circuit wrasslin' event there was a wrestler with a VERY unfortunate upper back tattoo that said "RAGE" in elaborate gothic script, but from a distance it looked like it said "rape" He was clearing the process of getting it removed, and when I went and saw the same company a few months later the removal process was much further along.
posted by Ferreous at 4:38 PM on October 16, 2016 [5 favorites]

Age 46 here. Had free time and money in the 90s and *still* didn't get inked. Pierced, yes of course. But OMG I'm so excited because the Tattoo God whispered in my ear recently and told me it was time and the design is so deep and personal to me and beautiful and original and I found the perfect artist and he sketched it out and that shit is going on my skin on the 27th!

And yeah I'm old and not hip and fuck you, YOU DONT ARGUE WITH THE TATTOO GOD.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 4:47 PM on October 16, 2016 [42 favorites]

Most of my right arm and shoulder are blacked out and I'm forever fielding "oh you must have had a bunch of bad tattoos that you wanted to cover up" comments. Nope, just like it this way.
posted by not_the_water at 4:56 PM on October 16, 2016 [6 favorites]

I do kind of laugh when people get street/hardcore tattoos and then age out of them. I know I'd regret "Notorious 425" when I was 36.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 5:05 PM on October 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

When I was getting my second piece a couple years ago my artist who was in his 40s and had been tattooing since he was 19 complained about the pernicious effect of instagram and Pinterest on shortening/condensing the cycles of popular tastes. His reasoning was that there had always been trends/fads which shifted over time but that it wasn't until Instagram that he saw people coming in showing him the exact same or very similar pictures of things they wanted, and that once a month the pics/themes changed. He said 7 different women had come in asking for grey owls the previous week.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 5:13 PM on October 16, 2016 [11 favorites]

> I can't get tattoos because I'm prone to forming keloids

I am, too! I have a long surgical scar that's all keloid'd on my forearm - you can see part of it under the tail of the kestrel I got tattooed a couple years ago. I have a bunch of other tattoos and keloids have not formed or otherwise been a problem. (Just in case you were needing a reason to toss your reason for not getting inked.)
posted by rtha at 5:15 PM on October 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

I got my first tattoo at age 21 in 1987, back when "good" girls didn't do those sorts of things. Over the years I added seven more, all of which have special meaning to me and I don't regret a single one. I'm 50 now, and I have a design I want to cover up my original tattoo with - I should have gotten that first one bigger and better, but it's only the size of a silver dollar and it'll be easy to cover up with what I want. I have an aunt who got her first tattoo in her 60s; my own mother got hers in her 50's, well after I'd gotten my first one. Tattoos have no age restrictions (other than being 18 to get your first one)!
posted by annieb at 5:27 PM on October 16, 2016 [7 favorites]

Got a smallish Mayan symbol under my belly button in the mid-90s and don't regret it yet. At the same time my then-girlfriend got a flowering branch on her shoulder that I drew. Kind of weird to think that someone is out there, god knows where, with something on their body, permanently, that I created.
posted by gottabefunky at 5:30 PM on October 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

I have a tattoo by Chuck Jones. Not the cartoonist, the game designer. He was a tattoo artist first. Astonishingly good with color. It's almost 25 years old, and still looks crisp.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 5:34 PM on October 16, 2016 [4 favorites]

I have a tribal design on my arm. I tell people it's a symbolic tattoo and the thing it symbolizes is the 90s.
posted by supercrayon at 5:52 PM on October 16, 2016 [46 favorites]

This was so great! I love her even more knowing she has tribal AND biker gang tattoos. My anxious, over-analytical personality really paid off in the early 2000's when I desperately wanted ink, but just could not decide what to get! I even won a large gift certificate to a great tattoo shop and never used it. In retrospect, I'm glad because my leading choice then was to get the Jack Daniels "Old 97" on my forearm. Since I can now barely sip a Jack and Coke without gagging, I'm glad to not have this symbol of past alcohol abuse branded on me. One of my fears is my kids will one day get face or neck tattoos. I won't even tell them not to though, because I'm convinced that will make them do it.
posted by areaperson at 6:00 PM on October 16, 2016 [5 favorites]

I am forever grateful that my friends talked me out of getting eyeballs tattoed on my palms back in 1996.

I have a big third eye on my left palm. It has been working out quite well!
posted by Meatbomb at 6:09 PM on October 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm just a little too old to have gotten a tattoo in my youth. I didn't know anyone who had one until I was in about twenty-five and I had a kid by then and didn't have any spare money for such things. I was thinking about getting one for my fiftieth birthday but I'm so indecisive that it's two years past and I still haven't even started thinking about a design.
posted by octothorpe at 7:19 PM on October 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Tattly is my solution to that, octothorpe.

I 100% respect anyone's tattoo decisions--and I really appreciate this post because I've often wondered how people feel about those cheap '90s tats--but am not up to making a permanent decision for myself.

So I get the urge for 'a tattoo' every once in a while and Tattly satisfies that. (You cannot tell me that this is not hilarious!).
posted by librarylis at 7:46 PM on October 16, 2016 [4 favorites]

NOTHING worse than a person who's very serious about their very serious tattoos. I feel this way about fashion, too. It should be fun to get dressed!
posted by materialgirl at 8:03 PM on October 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

My grandfather (who was in the Navy) had his wife's name tattoed on his bicep and my uncle and aunt, married at 17 and still married, have each other's names tattooed on their wrists. Now, I love tattoos but would never get a s.o.s name on my body. But I love that they beat the curse.
posted by branravenraven at 10:24 PM on October 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

Samantha Irby is a really good writer. She's so conversational that I think, "I could write like that", but then I try and totally can't. It's deceptively careful and we'll crafted writing.
posted by latkes at 11:15 PM on October 16, 2016 [5 favorites]

Yay, I love Bitches Gotta Eat. My fave is the one in this thread but the thread itself is kind of a tire fire. 2012 was a different country.
posted by en forme de poire at 11:27 PM on October 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm turning 50 this year (tomorrow, actually) and am celebrating by getting a full sleeve finished on my right arm.
posted by gingerbeer at 11:31 PM on October 16, 2016 [12 favorites]

My first tattoo was an ill-advised and poorly executed tribal-ish black sun & crescent moon. I was 18. It was 1994. I drew it myself, but I was so desperate to get inked to prove I was a cool kid that I went to a shitty shop and they didn't do a great job on it.

It's since been covered up by a large floral piece and I have lots more tattoos now. I probably could have lived with the sun/moon but although it was small, it was so dark and so **90s** and in such a prominent place (upper arm) that it would have dictated the style of anything else I added to it. Luckily covering it up wasn't too difficult and no one knows it's a cover up until I point it out. None of my tattoos are serious meaning-wise, but some are serious in terms of the financial commitment and the amount of space they take up. Others are little silly bangers that don't mean anything beyond "hey wouldn't it be funny to get a tattoo of a UFO beaming up a candy corn for Halloween?"

I think "bad" tattoos are easier to live with when they are one of many (some good, some bad, all representing differnt times in your life), because they can be seen in context. I can see how it would be a little harder to live with if it's all by its lonesome on your skin.

Great article, though. I never would have thought that she had bad tattoos and it definitely makes me love her even more.
posted by misskaz at 7:28 AM on October 17, 2016 [2 favorites]

I do kind of laugh when people get street/hardcore tattoos and then age out of them.

My tiny moment of pleasure is when I see a vegan [straight]edge tattoo on someone eating BBQ ribs and drinking a beer. Not because they've changed, but because vegan edge kids gave everyone so much shit for eating and drinking what they wanted.
posted by a halcyon day at 8:46 AM on October 17, 2016 [3 favorites]

46 years old. Just got my first tattoo...a japanese dragon on my left forearm. I had always sworn I would never get a tattoo but sometimes you wake up and something inside of you speaks to you and says 'it's time to get a tattoo'. That happened to me so I did it. I can't imagine ever regretting it as I waited for that inner voice to tell me it was time. Now I can't wait to get my second and third ones. Once you break that seal and get the first, it's really hard to not start obsessing about others. I'm extremely picky though so it'll probably be another year before I get number two - I have to find the right design and the right artist. But the thing is...if you give a shit about what people think about your tattoo, you got the tattoo for the wrong reason in the first place. To me, tattoos are intensely personal and the only one who could take away from its meaning is me.
posted by spicynuts at 9:07 AM on October 17, 2016 [5 favorites]

Younger Monster has this sword on his left inner forearm, with the phrase "What is broken can be reforged." He plays League of Legends, that's his Champion's motto. His Inker did a fantastic job with this art, it's rich and glorious and dramatic.

He has always been very practical, though, so I was a little surprised to see this. "Well, even when I stop playing League, this is still a really good way to look at shit that happens in life."

He's not wrong.
posted by MissySedai at 10:53 AM on October 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

my first couple of tattoos had to have ~meaning~ and then i finally got to the point where i started getting tattoos just because they were fun or because why the hell not and honestly i'm much happier with those tattoos than the ones i felt very seriously about
posted by burgerrr at 11:03 AM on October 17, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm not hating, I swear, but of course almost no art is in "style" or will represent someone well during someone's whole life. That this doesn't occur to a lot of people is interesting.
posted by agregoli at 11:22 AM on October 17, 2016

i think it's not so much that it doesn't occur as just that a lot of people (myself included) don't necessarily care.

like, some of my tattoos probably won't age well, but they were important and/or fun to me at a memorable time in my life, so i won't be too torn up about them eventually looking kinda goofy or whatever
posted by burgerrr at 11:40 AM on October 17, 2016 [5 favorites]

I have a "tattoo" where I stabbed myself in the leg with a pencil because I was an unsupervised kid who decided that holding a pencil and flailing my arms wildly was a good idea. As far as I can remember that's the whole story to how it happened

it's just a dot obviously but it feels very much in the same spirit as the "I was a teenager with some ink and a needle, here's some dots" stories above, just a different age group
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:02 PM on October 17, 2016

I've long been tempted to get this as a tattoo on my wrist, because I kind of love the way it's both my name in Quenya and an english language word, but never have quite gotten the nerve because of anticipation fo regret.
posted by tavella at 1:57 PM on October 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've got a quote from Ovid's Metamorphoses, reading OMNIA MUTANTUR • NIHIL INTERIT (everything changes • nothing perishes) in a band around my ankle that, thanks to my not figuring out the start/end point a little more precisely, basically reads "MUTANT" if you're walking behind me. It's a little too tightly spaced, the lines have blurred, the font's a bit too large, and it's not lined up just right, but it is a part of me that I got for a good reason, which was to honor a relationship that I knew was destined to fail, and fail badly.

I'd never been truly, properly, head-over-heels in love then, at 36, and even as I was dodging deck chairs tumbling down the decks of the whole enormous bulk of that sinking ship, I had this instinct that anything that hurt this much needed to leave a scar to mark its passage, so I started with just a letter, just a sans serif T, the first letter of my quarry's name, and then built out the rest from that T, closing the circle with an admonishment to assuage my fears from an old, old work of literature, and that was that.

I was not able to accept my own best wisdom, even with the mark, and spent eleven years on my own, afraid of love, until—well, that's neither here nor there, but I'm 48 now, and old wisdom is suddenly coming into focus, and my black and blue scar is murky and imperfect, but everything is changed, but the thing that once lit me up with happy turns out to have not perished.

I think I'll add to it someday, when I need another reminder on another subject, but for now, it is just sound and fury from twelve years ago, reminding me who I was, and who I will continue to be.
posted by sonascope at 2:37 PM on October 17, 2016 [4 favorites]

I have homemade tattoos on my back.

Small neddle and china ink, turned greenish and faint with age.

Top aligned, around mid-shoulderblade height, from left to right, with about 2 inch spacing between each, groups of small dots going from one dot to eight dots.

Same thing down the center, from one to twelve, more or less corresponding to thoracic vertebrae.

I will never, ever, under no circumstances, for the rest of my life, regret the fact that I can ask someone to go 3 across, 4 down, and scratch right there.
posted by Dr. Curare at 4:02 PM on October 17, 2016 [6 favorites]

I regret not getting more tatoos when I was younger. I think it wont be too long before my skin isn't going to bounce back and heal as quickly and I have AT LEAST one more design I want to get
posted by WalkerWestridge at 9:59 PM on October 17, 2016

A few years back I had the burning desire to get this tattooed on my wrist. I just had a strong urge to have a joke tattoo but felt I needed to sit on the idea for a year or two to be sure that it was meant to be. Thank gawd I did; the joke got very old relatively soon. That's one tattoo that I wouldn't care to have to explain at the nursing home.

Remember, when the Tattoo God tells you that you really need to think it over before proceeding, you listen!
posted by echolalia67 at 5:38 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]