Tattoos

I stood in union square watching a bunch of guys practice their break dancing. The dancers themselves werent that good, but they were doing it for fun and not for show. But i wasnt starring at the guy in the middle practicing his head spin, I was watching the guy standing waitting for his turn. More specifically i was staring at his back. It was a summer day and the heat had caused this man to take of his shirt, and there tattooed on his back was an outline of the Philippines. The tattoo was just a simple outline of the country that covered his whole back. To me this was a true a Tattoo. It was a simple statement of what this man considered to be important to him. The design was simple and was not made to attract attention to himself.
A tattoo should be a painting you paint and then hang in your living room. You have no for no other reason besides that you like it. You didnt sell the picture or put it on public display you kept it to yourself. It use to be that tattoos were looked down upon. That meant that getting a tattoo was personal. There was no cool tattoo, you didnt get cool point because you had a koi fish or a dragon. You through away the common social standards for this personal meaning.
In other cultures tattoos have a meaning. It is said that in acient japan they would tattoo criminals so they stood out. This is how tattoo shirts started. when you joined the mob your whole body was tattooed. That way if you had gone to jail the tattoo that marked you as a criminal would be hidden by all the other tattoos. This is how much fads start out. In the beginning they have a real purpose. But by having a purpose you are associated with a group of people, meaning anyone who want to be in that group needs to be with that fad. Tattoos are that to the extreme. When you get a tattoo you are stuck with it. Knowing this when people see a tattoo they think the person is strongly connected with it. In the end it can be the ultimet trick. If i wanna be a hippie and i get the peace sighn on my arm. Since im stuck with it people assume im a hardcore hippie. I dont even have to open my mouth.