Betty Boop Gone Bad

I hate tattoos. They’re right up there with tongue piercings and blue Mohawks in my book. Whether it’s snakes crawling up someone’s arm or a rose on someone’s butt crack, to me, willfully injecting indelible ink drawings with no thought of whether the eighty-year-old you will be as thrilled as the eighteen-year-old you, is just plain dumb. Plus, most of the tattoos I see look like the work of an art school flunky.

Then there are the politically incorrect tattoos. Case in point: a patient of mine tattooed “Cathy” over his heart to endear himself to his fiancée. Only problem? The girl dumped him and he married “Laurie.” Wonder how Laurie likes seeing his ex’s name, Cathy, plastered on his chest for the duration of their marriage.

A ninety-year old patient of mine got multiple busty, naked women tattooed all over his chest, back, and arms during World War II. He was a tall, muscular man in his prime but now that he’s ninety, he’s shrunk three inches, and his skin just hangs. The net result? His once buxom women now look saggy and floppy and, well, like the body of a ninety-year-old woman!  Age has not been a friend to Betty Boop—her breasts droop to her waist! Plus, both the patient and I are uncomfortable whenever I examine him; the sleazy tattoos make him look like a dirty old man. In reality, he’s matured into a decent man who, to my knowledge, has remained faithful to his wife. But now he’s stuck with his nasty, embarrassing tattoos.

And do men not stop to think that gun tattoos plastered up and down their arms might be a serious deterrent to employment for a gun-phobic woman like me? If I see guns slathered all over a prospective employee during a job interview, I’m inclined to wonder if the dude has one of those military assault rifles with a couple hundred rounds of ammo stashed in his garage, just waiting for the day I turn down his request for a raise! The interview comes to a crashing halt and the resumé lands in the recycling dumpster. Next?

And think of all the wasted money! What if all the money wasted on applying and then removing tattoos was instead put into paying off the national debt? (Well, okay, we’d still be thirteen trillion in the hole.)

Needless to say, if it were left to me, tattoo parlors would be extinct! How about you? What do you think about tattoos? Do I just need to lighten up?

• Posted in: Embarrassing ♦ Funny
• Tagged: aged tatoos, Tatoo, tatoo parlors, tatoos