<p>Saw a girl walking around on campus today who has perhaps a 6"X6" tattoo on her front thigh. It looked like the product of a Fruit Roll Up tongue tattoo. She can think it’s pretty all she wants. It will still look like a Fruit Roll Up tongue tattoo.</p>
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<p>I cannot figure out how this would work. Even if places that are known to be “bad” are eliminated from the selection, it does not automatically mean that we now have a list of “good” ones.</p>
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But I will never be convinced that Miss Kansas’ tattoos are anything but graffiti.
Let me ask you this: what if she was wearing a tight shirt with the same pattern on it, would you consider that graffiti as well? What about if it was a temporary marking?</p>
<p>I am curious as to whether it is truly the aesthetic you object to, or the permanence."</p>
<p>She can wear a different shirt. It might still be ugly, but it’s removable. The tattoo isn’t. She has made it part of her. That’s what distinguishes it from the unattractive or unfortunate hair style, shoe style, makeup, etc. </p>
<p>And b.s. on the not- judging. You don’t think some women with tons of makeup look like hookers and that you’d judge them?</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl</p>
<p>I know plenty of sex workers who wear minimal makeup and their clients love it.</p>
<p>“The only known possible case was reported in 1988 concerning 2 men who received tattoos in prison with unsterilized needles that had been used to tattoo other inmates [44].”</p>
<p>I don’t think any of us are advocating getting tattooed while in prison. I think that most people with good judgement would 1)hopefully not be in prison and 2)would not get tattooed while in. What Cosmicfish is talking about are walk up or appt establishments that are licensed who have tattooists that have apprenticed and prosess an autoclave- these are not the equavalent to prison or stick and poke tattoos. </p>
<p>When you get a tattoo you should ask to see their on site autoclave, take a look in it, and ask about the sterilization schedule. If the artists or managers don’t know that information without skipping a beat, don’t use their services.</p>
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It’s my opinion the word is usually used by people who both consider it a pejorative and that they’re never guilty of doing it. Commonly dropped in a discussion - to quash it - because the practice suffers the fatal flaw of being only mostly correct.</p>
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<p>If I wanted a tattoo, I’d get one but I’d have weighed carefully what team jersey I was slipping into and decided it didn’t matter if I got stereotyped.</p>
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<p>Really? :eek:</p>
<p>Of course, no one advocates getting into prison in the first place 
Glad that we stirred the discussion towards a very important issue - infection prevention.</p>
<p>In addition to checking for a presence of an autoclave and such, one needs to ask how the artists handle ink. Do they use tap water to dilute it? Do they use the same bottle over and over? If so, run from that place as fast as you can! Water has to come from a bottle that has been autoclaved and has not been opened as indicated by the special autoclaving tape on the lid or a commercially supplied single-use sterile bottle. Individual, sterile ink packs should be used as well. Even when the tattoo artist observes every precaution, things can go wrong, because inks, as we discussed above, are outside of the FDA jurisdiction. FDA can only interfere if there are reports of infections:</p>
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<p>[FDA</a> and CDC warn that tattoo ink can be hazardous to your health - Los Angeles Times](<a href=“http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/23/news/la-heb-tattoo-ink-infection-20120823]FDA”>FDA and CDC warn that tattoo ink can be hazardous to your health)</p>
<p>Plenty of sex workers? Do you know their clients, too? :eek:</p>
<p>“Yes, I find people who not only choose but celebrate the ability to misjudge others based on superficial features surprising, in the same way that I find people who see Jackass and decide to replicate those activities surprising. That is, I know such people exist, but meeting one is always a surprise.”</p>
<p>Do you know the characters on Saturday Night Live that are meant to be overly enthusiastic middle school teachers trying to look cool? Let’s say I said I made an effort to dress that way. You don’t think people make judgments – whether it’s thrift shop clothing, designer clothing, mullets, sweater sets and pearls, athletic clothing? How you choose to present yourself does say something about how you wish to be perceived.</p>
<p>Whether or not someone is wrong to judge another person based off tattoos is irrelevant. What is relevant is that you will be judged and it is possible that you could be left out of potential opportunities because of it. (Obviously this doesn’t apply to the OP as he is getting a tat that will almost always be covered).</p>
<p>"Why? Would that show poor judgment? Who are you to question my judgment? Who am I to say my value system of preferring hygienic places is better than yours? "</p>
<p>I am using this because it represents a lot of the argument about Tattoos being dangerous, unclean, whatever…and the point is, that isn’t a value. Many things we do in life have risks associated with them, and for example, with smoking there are documentable risks with smoking to the point that labeling it foolish is not a matter of belief, it is about real evidence, about the number of people who died each year from smoking related illnesses, the cost of it in terms of crippling people and the fact that it affects other people. The risk factor is so large that only maybe someone in serious denial could sit back and say that risks of smoking are no big deal and claim it is a ‘belief’.</p>
<p>Sure, there are risks with Tattoos, but the thing with Tattoos is unlike smoking, the risk factors can be made pretty small. Leaving out aesthetics or the permanence for the moment, let’s look at the risks:</p>
<p>1)Work. Sure, you risk something with visible tattoos on a job interview, unfortunately as seen on here a lot of people will judge you for it, and it could hurt with some/many jobs. Someone with the neck tattoo or the sleeve on their arm that shows or whatever is risking that, and I hope they understand it.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if someone has tattoos all over their body but they are covered, that isn’t a problem, and other then maybe if they worked for some uber Christian company, I don’t know too many companies that would fire someone for having tattoos not sen in the business environment (i.e you wear shorts to the company picnic). </p>
<p>2)Getting a disease from a dirty needle, bad practices, etc. Sure, even the best preventative practices can still slip through, but guess what folks, that happens with anything. You go in for surgery, you have despite precautions a not insignificant chance of post surgery infections, and though it is well monitored, the blood supply for transfusions could still potentially have problems with it. You eat in a seafood restaurant or a sushi place you run the risk of getting sick, including hep A, B or C, from raw seafood. Sure, if you want to absolutely have no fear of risks, you don’t do it…but if you seriously eliminate anything from your life that has any possibility of risk, where would you be? I work in NYC, have for years, and guess what, NYC is the epicenter of hate for terrorists, but I still go to work every day. </p>
<p>There is a difference between risks that have born out to be significant, like smoking, that statistically frankly is foolish, to things with risks that can be ameliorated. Sure, tattoo ink could be contaminated, but so could a lot of things, you could go for a pedicure, there be a small cut in your nailbed, and get sick if the polish was contaminated, if you ever saw some of the “Bar Rescue program” you would never go to a restaurant again, but the risk is pretty small. </p>
<p>Values are about beliefs, moral or otherwise, foolish risks are about delimited facts. Sure, if you went to a third world country, were in prison, or some fly by night tattoo place, you are taking big risks, but a shop that has been in business, is known, is inspected and so forth, has background risks as many places do, that is not values.</p>
<p>Values are aesthetics, like “geez, that looks horrible” or “geez, why would a pretty girl do that?”, and I understand that, it is a personal reaction; on the other hand, if you say “gee, they have a tattoo, it is horrible, they must be stupid” it is judging who they are from maybe questionable taste…people who say “it is a sign of low iq”, ‘it shows they must be a disreputable person’ are going beyond values, they are saying someone is unworthy because they have some ink on their skin. It is about judging people not for their actions, what they do to others, but based simply on appearance and what time and again that has shown is much of that kind of thing ends up marking good people wrongly, while often judging slimy people as good because they follow convention. </p>
<p>Put it this way, the people who took down the financial system and unleashed so much pain on everyone probably hate tattoos, too, and insist on the world of formal business wear and proper decorum, and look what they did <em>shrug</em>.</p>
<p>Obviously, people have the right to their opinions, but the problem with judging others is something Tom Paine talked about. He said the words tolerance and intolerance are equally bad, because at the root of it someone decided they had the right to judge other people, and often it wasn’t about who they were as people but rather because they were different, and the fundamental problem with both was judging in the first place…we obviously all do it, but I think maybe, just maybe, there are much better things to judge someone on, like their actions as a person, and maybe, just maybe, a lot of what we call values are nothing more than common practice. Justifying for example that getting a tattoo is foolish because of health risks that can be minimized, or because it is permanent, is saying it is foolish for everyone cause you don’t like it, and all the justifications, about work, about people’s perceptions, come down to really personal bias, and even though it is an optional thing, judging a person for their tattoos is like judging someone because of their race, their height, their weight, their sexual orientation, it is judging someone for what they are or appear as, rather than who they are.</p>
<p>And yeah, that is how the world works, people discriminate against those different from themselves, but it doesn’t mean it is necessarily a good thing to do:)</p>
<p>“…or a sushi place you run the risk of getting sick, including hep A, B or C, from raw seafood.”</p>
<p>This phrase discredits whatever else you said in that lenghty post. Only Hep A is transmitted through contaminated food. Can’t get the otherr two via the “sushi route”:</p>
<p>[ABC’s</a> of Hepatitis: Hep A, B, C, D and E: Hepatitis B Foundation](<a href=“Server error » Hepatitis B Foundation”>Home » Hepatitis B Foundation)</p>
<p>Bunsenburner - do you really think that getting a tattoo in a clean, reputable establishment is a significant health risk as bad, I don’t know, eating a salad? A couple of decades ago a guy in prison or in Vietnam or Jamaica might have gotten HIV from a shared tattoo needle, and some small percentage of people will get an infection of some type as well. I don’t see a whole lot of number in these arguments, and the ones I see are vanishingly small, on the same order as eating some spinach (which has been contaminated with e. coli on several occasions)?</p>
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No argument there, although I would say not necessarily MUCH less superficial.</p>
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I would consider “poor judgment” to BE a deeper problem. Judgment is a characteristic of a person, and a very broad one at that. So yes, I take offense at that. Because while I might disagree with some of your decisions, I would not assume any of them to be representative of your judgment. Because “poor judgment” implies a single standard, an envelope within which we can reasonably accommodate the wealth of “prudent” behavior, and that envelope better be pretty soft because otherwise you need condemn everyone who eats fast food, everyone who drinks alcohol, everyone who rides roller coasters… because all of those things have risks or health consequences and NONE of them are even remotely necessary.</p>
<p>And frankly, I just don’t have the time to be that judgmental.</p>
<p>Why do we educate our kids about sex? Because of those minor risks you are talking about, musicparent. Sex is not in the same inherently dangerous category as smoking, yet we take our time to talk about safe sex practices with out kids. Same thing goes for tattooing. Same thing applies to mani/pedi/waxing whatever. If you have flipped through the pages of Death by Pedicure, you would think twice about getting one.</p>
<p>[Death</a> By Pedicure, the dirty secrets of nail salons (Health Safety):Amazon:Kindle Store](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001KZH5FC]Death”>http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001KZH5FC)</p>
<p>Burying our heads in the sand saying “geez, the risks are negligent” is a wrong approach.</p>
<p>Please read my posts more carefully, musicparent. The mentioning of the prison HIV transmission was in response to the CDC’s statement about no “documented” cases of this ever happening. “Documented” is a term open to interpretation. </p>
<p>And as far as eating spinach goes, sure - we teach our kids about washing it and seeking medical attention in the rare cases if one does get food poisoning or infection. What arguments do you have against education to minimize risks?</p>
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I actually considered that (my wife is an archaeologist and made me aware of the history of the swastika a long time ago), but I do think that Hitler has corrupted it enough that permanent display is, put simply, inconsiderate even if you have a non-racist meaning behind it.</p>
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In order:</p>
<p>Because.</p>
<p>Because the goal in getting a tattoo is to have a chosen piece of art on your skin, and choosing a disreputable establishment will add a multitude of risks without contributing one iota towards that goal. If that is not your goal, then congratulations, you are unlike any tattoo-seeker I have ever met, heard of, or thought about, and you should skip professional standards and just find a friendly sadist with a dirty needle and a printer ink cartridge.</p>
<p>Artistically? No one. On your rights to do what you want? No one at all. If you note, I did not try and prohibit you from shoving a rusty knife into your left buttock and carving that Hello Kitty right in there. I just said I would not advocate going to a bad establishment. And if that is what you want, then I will be curious as to your goals, but I have no interest in talking an anonymous stranger out of thrill-seeking behavior if that is their actual goal.</p>
<p>Hygienic standards would be measured (or at least estimated) by considering the frequency and severity of health problems associated with the establishment. I am not sure if your value system or mine can diverge significantly while still meeting the definition of hygienic.</p>
<p>No, I do not.</p>
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That would be rude, certainly.</p>
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No, he should not. But that is not the issue.</p>
<p>If I see a woman walking down the street and say to her “You should be at home taking care of your family!” that would be rude. But if I said that “SHE should be at home…” to a friend, would that really be any better? Sure, she doesn’t know about it, but I am still apparently the kind of person who thinks that working women are worthy of derision, that they are showing “bad judgment”.</p>
<p>THAT is the issue. Rude is a small problem. Rude is manageable. But the world is full of people who do horrendous things because, in big ways, they think that their value system is the only valid one. And lacking immediate access to people who think that in big ways, I see no reason to ignore people who think that in SMALL ways.</p>
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She HAS made it part of her - and that is the exact reason she did it. And as so many people note, her purpose in life (yes, even HER’S) is not to beautify your world. If she chose to wear the same unattractive hair style, shoe style, makeup, etc every single day, would that be any different? She is choosing to do so in advance. And a great many people who do so (at least half even by the most pessimistic of studies) are perfectly content with that decision.</p>
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Actually, I would think “actor”, because I know a lot of actors and that rather garish look is what is needed to look human under harsh stage lighting. Conversely, the only hookers I have ever met looked pretty normal. And what am I supposed to judge anyway? And why? Behaviors matter, not appearances.</p>