<p>Texas Divorce “rate”</p>
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<p>[Texas</a> Department of State Health Services, Center for Health Statistics 2006 Annual Report, Marriage & Divorce](<a href=“http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/chs/vstat/latest/nnuptil.shtm]Texas”>http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/chs/vstat/latest/nnuptil.shtm)</p>
<p>The number of divorces in a year is about 1/2 the number of marriages.</p>
<p>I apologize. I should have fact checked that! </p>
<p>It seems like that 50% figure came from a projection of 2002 from the mid-nineties, which ended up being overestimated. The real figure was more like 30%? Regardless, I wonder how the likelihoods of regretting a tattoo and regretting a marriage compare.</p>
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<p>Sounds like a great topic for the Cafe - “Which do you regret more - your first marriage or your first tattoo?”</p>
<p>Pizza, where did I say NO ONE regrets their tattoos or wants them removed? I said I don’t know anyone- at least no one has told me. MY personal experience.</p>
<p>Of course there are people that want them removed. Just none that I PERSONALLY know that have disclosed that information to me. I thought I made that distinction in my post, but if not, I’m clarifying.</p>
<p>Of course they aren’t all drug using losers. The problem is that there are still lots of otherwise open, accepting individuals who dislike them, even many young people I know. From a strictly practical POV why limit future options?</p>
<p>As far as judging people by appearances, that is just the reality. There are laws to protect the rights of minorities, gay people, the disabled etc. but no one is going to legislate the response to a personal fashion choice anytime soon. </p>
<p>The FDA page has some info about tattoo safety, including the fact that dye accumulates in the lymph nodes and no one knows what the long term effects of that might be. You can’t even make the argument that tattoos have been around a long time because the
variety of ink being used has multiplied in recent years along with the trend - none of it is regulated.</p>
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The popularity of the tattoo-removal industry is far smaller than the popularity of the tattoo-installation industry.</p>
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There are a tremendous number of rich people with tattoos, and not just athletes and artists, but Congressmen and leaders of industry as well. If it seems like there are far less of them, perhaps that is due in large part to simple socioeconomic distribution - if the desire to get tattoos was evenly distributed across all socioeconomic classes, then there would still be far more poor people getting tattoos simply because there are far more poor people.</p>
<p>These kind of assumptions help no one.</p>
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And why hang around people who will judge your worth by your decision to get tattoos? I don’t make mine a secret, and have never met anyone in academia or industry who has voiced disdain for my decision, and if they did then I don’t really want to hang around with them anyway. Would you want to be associated with someone who will judge you for your hairstyle or clothing, even when changing those is simple?</p>
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I do not see anyone arguing for legal protections, but if someone wants to judge me by my having tattoos, why should I give them a pass for that? Outside of reality TV, where is this socially acceptable?</p>
<p>One of the reasons I tend to prefer people with tattoos and piercing is simply because they don’t do this sort of stuff. Show me a guy with full sleeves or a woman with pierced eyebrows and I know that they are much more likely to accept me for who I am, not how I look.</p>
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I agree that her willingness to mention it is a very good sign! I also think that this is a very common issue amongst teens and twenty-somethings, so having open communication about it all is a big advantage!</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it is going to be a hard conversation to have. Children have expectations and decisions and moral judgements made for them, but as adults we make them for ourselves, and in-between there is a learning curve where mistakes will be made. The young man has staked out a position on tattoos and drugs, and may still be exploring what those final positions will be. He may follow a path that leads to progressively harder drugs and crime, or he may simply be experimenting and may come to the realization that the benefits are not worth the legal and health risks. Without knowing more about him and her it is impossible to say. I know people who have walked both sides of that line.</p>
<p>Ultimately, you need to help her understand how to make these decisions and evaluations and then respect her right to make them - you have little control now and will have no control within just a couple of years. If you leave her alone it then you are forcing her to make those decisions without the viewpoints and experience big decisions really need, but if you push too hard she will cut you out at exactly the worst time.</p>
<p>“I do not see anyone arguing for legal protections, but if someone wants to judge me by my having tattoos, why should I give them a pass for that? Outside of reality TV, where is this socially acceptable?”</p>
<p>I hate to tell you, cosmicfish that MOST people judge you by your appearance, at least initially. If you choose to have tattoos or piercings, if you’re overweight, if you’re “too thin”, if you are short, if you dress professionally, if you have a missing tooth, etc…</p>
<p>People DO judge a book by its cover.</p>
<p>As I stated before, my place of business absolutely WILL not hire someone with facial piercings or visible tattoos. In addition, in a lot of corporate settings, if you wear clothes that are too casual to work, your supervisor will send you home. If you are a manager and you wear the wrong kind of shoes, your hair is beginning to look scraggly or you’ve put a little too much weight - you will probably be passed over for that next promotion.</p>
<p>It’s real life, not reality TV.</p>
<p>I hate to tell you, cosmicfish that MOST people judge you by your appearance, at least initially</p>
<p>I agree, however I would go on to state that unless they are very shallow, after a minute or so, they will go on to use other sources of information to form their opinion of you.</p>
<p>Tattoo = permanent bell bottoms.</p>
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I am well aware of that. My point is that while it may be inevitable, there is no moral superiority in doing so. If someone judges me less for having a tattoo, then I judge THEM less for being so shallow. And why would I want to associate with such a person?</p>
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I do not think that anyone is disputing that facial tattoos, most facial piercings, and most other “unconcealable” modifications are inappropriate for a professional setting - as a professional you represent your company to a significant extent, and it is hard to do so with such a dramatic personal statement. That having been said, outside of movies I have never seen someone getting such a modification without an awareness of this - if you are getting a facial tattoo, you are NOT planning on a career in pharmaceutical sales.</p>
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As a professional, you just described a company that will never get my employment. If the deciding factor in my promotion is whether or not I have gained a few pounds or missed a haircut, then I am finding a different employer. And if you tell me that a particular company has such practices, I will try not to do business with them, because I do not support such behavior. “Professional” certainly does have expectations of the employee, but it should also have expectations of the employer as well.</p>
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<p>Isn’t that illegal?</p>
<p>“The number of divorces in a year is about 1/2 the number of marriages.”</p>
<p>Yes, but that’s not the same as saying that half of all marriages end in divorce. The denominator is all existing marriages that could have ended in divorce, not the number of marriages that happened to form in that year.</p>
<p>If there were 1000 births and 500 deaths in your town last year, you wouldn’t conclude that half of the people died. Because you know that the denominator for the death rate would be the 30,000 (or whatever) people in the town, not the 1000 who were recently born. </p>
<p>Sorry, major pet peeve!</p>
<p>"I don’t make mine a secret, and have never met anyone in academia or industry who has voiced disdain for my decision, and if they did then I don’t really want to hang around with them anyway. "</p>
<p>I wouldn’t voice disdain any more than I’d go tell someone I didn’t like their haircut or their makeup. I would still probably privately think - poor aesthetic choice. Just like I would if someone wore tons and tons of makeup. Just not attractive.</p>
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Yes, but since the number of marriages AND the number of divorces is constantly increasing, it is often easiest to speak in terms of the rates of change. Even then you do still have the problems that there is a relatively random amount of time between any given divorce and its corresponding marriage, and that the corresponding statistics are varying substantially over the course of any sample period. Regardless, I have never seen any estimates or studies that place the number below ~33%, and most place the probability of any given marriage of eventually ending in divorce at around 40-50% in the US.</p>
<p>“Show me a guy with full sleeves or a woman with pierced eyebrows and I know that they are much more likely to accept me for who I am, not how I look.”</p>
<p>Really? Would they be so accepting of a person dressed to the nines in HYP? The “discrimination” based on looks goes both ways.</p>
<p>As far as the subject of braces being brought up here - braces and tattoos are even less reated than apples and oranges. The former procedure is done by a licensed professional with an advanced degree that took years to get, and to perform the latter, one is not required to have even a HS diploma, and in some places, no liceses are involved, and defilitely, no continuing education. Additionally, the % of orthodontic procedures performed to correct some defect that would result in health problems down the road (medical need) is infinitely higher than the % medically neccessary tattoos (something divided by zero is… you know the answer). Heck, even the % of medically needed breast augmentation procedures is waaay higher than the % of medically necessary tatoos.</p>
<p>^ But the basic concept is the same. For non-medically necessary braces and tattoos, it is done for purely PERMANENT cosmetic purposes. That is it. There is no other reason. If suddenly straight teeth were to go out of style, braces would be far less common.</p>
<p>I can’t even have a serious discussion if someone is actually trying to equate braces which take teeth back to what they’re supposed to look like – that are corrective for a flaw – with tattoos which are designed specifically to “step away” from the skin’s natural state.</p>
<p>What is the number (or relative %) of tattoos performed for medical reasons? Even if the number of of orthodontic procedures performed in this country decreased by 90%, it will still be infinitely higher than the number of medically neccessary tattoos.</p>