dopey gen y women regretting tattoos

Before I can talk about Gen Y girls who now realize getting tattoos was a seriously stupid mistake, I have to talk about the Gen X tattoo experience first.

I have no tattoos at all, but I knew a lot of people who did. And I know 100% of them all regret it.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was listening to metal music, playing pretty much nothing but metal on guitar, and hung around with people who were also into metal. And you absolutely can't be around people like that without seeing tattoos everywhere.

To some degree, I was the "weirdo" for not having any tattoos. And oh yeah, there were friends I had at the time who tried to make me go get one several times. Pretty much everyone I knew back then knew a guy who could ink me up. Whether it was just some dude who would do the inking in his house for cheap, or going to a parlor where you'd pay more, there was plenty of choice to be had. When I think about it, the choice available was quite impressive considering I grew up in Small Town Nowheresville USA.

When tattoos became super trendy in the mid-to-late-2000s due to all the reality TV shows about it, all the Gen X folk who had tattoos were pleased as punch about that since tats were now "cool".

Yeah, well, that didn't last.

Tattoos today will never be as "cool" as they were, as that time is long gone. Now you've got a bunch of tattooed Gen X who got old and fat. All that ink has now faded, all the weight put on stretched everything out, all the sharp lines of the original artwork fuzzed. It all looks like shit.

Gen X people who got tats back in the day all have regret for that decision. Every one of them.

As for the Gen Y girls, who at the present time are age 30-45, you would think they would have learned a valuable lesson (as in DON'T DO IT) from seeing what happened to tattooed Gen X girls. Nope. A bunch of them said screw it, and got inked up in their late teens and early 20s.

The inked up Gen Y girls in their early 30s now are the funniest of the lot. They say they feel regret for the ink they got in their younger years, but truly have no idea what's coming.

I would argue that women under 35 can still get away with tattoos because they have youth on their side, especially if they're fit. But once middle age truly kicks in, that is when the regret truly hits.

Inked up Gen X girls learned the very hard way that you cannot erase your age no matter how hard you try. Even if you lose the weight, get fit, and throw a bunch of money at cosmetic surgeries and whatever, you are never getting that early-20s girl back. Skin will stretch, wrinkle, and change color. Age spots will happen, possibly along with blotches here and there. Aging happens, and that's fine, except these girls all have ink loudly telling everybody who they were that doesn't even represent who they are now.

Back in my early and mid 20s when I saw all my metalhead friends at the time getting inked up, in my mind was the thought of, "that's a really bad idea". I wasn't thinking of what that ink would look like in the future. I wasn't thinking of how having ink would damage professional endeavors. I wasn't even thinking about the judgment of others when they would see the ink.

What I was thinking about was the permanence of that ink on my skin, and that's why I never pulled the trigger on getting a tattoo. Even in my young-and-dumb 20s, I recognized there was no way I could just take a shower and wash away that ink. The thought of not having an "undo" for that legitimately scared me.

There was also the whole Prerequisite Rules For Being A Metalhead thing that really rubbed me the wrong way, i.e. you must dress in all black all the time, must only listen to metal music and nothing else, must this, must that, must whatever, must blah blah blah. All in the name of being rebellious, except there's nothing rebellious about it. It's conformist. And part of that conformity to be "cool" with the metal crowd meant you must have tattoos. Yes, plural. Several of them. Ink up your whole body. Hop to it.

My thought on that was, "Yeah, I don't think so", which ended up being actual real rebellion compared to all those metalheads who were just a bunch of lemmings following each other.

For the Gen X girls who were all metal/punk/whatever years ago with tattoos everywhere, they all ended up in one of three states. Either old/fat/dumpy/bitter, old/thin/sickly/bitter, or old/thin/sickly/loopy.

The last one is, of course, the most interesting of the three. These broads are genuinely very nice people, and any sense of that pseudo-rebellious attitude is thankfully long gone, but they are absolutely hopped up on prescription brain pills 24/7. The brain pills are part of whatever else is in the cocktail of drugs they take for their ailments on the daily.

Broads like this are basically permanently dazed, hence the pleasant attitude. They can function and get by, but can't really do anything too complicated. As for all the tattoos they have, they stopped caring about those a long time ago. Too expensive to have removed, and too expensive to have them all redone, so they gave up on that. Their existence now is cats (they all have cats), astrology (they all own tarot decks), and gardening.

Inked Gen Y girls will all have the same fate, as their future has already been decided. They'll just be a bunch of haggard looking cat ladies who never go out on days when Mercury or Neptune is doing weird shit or whatever, and grow tomatoes. And maybe make their own soaps.

It's not all doom and gloom, however. Many of the inked Gen X girls got themselves out of their personal hell and got centered once again by losing weight, getting crafty and getting outside. They know how to do things like fix a washing machine, mend and paint a fence, re-tile a bathroom and so on, among other things. A fair amount of them also went all-in with the "modern witch" look, which to be honest is kinda cute. Instead of that stupid rebellious look nonsense, they dress in flowy garb that's more classy. Nothing wrong with that. Some also got healthy enough to get off the brain pills, which is a significant improvement moving forward.

In their own way, some inked up Gen X girls found their way to be proper women as best they could and make it work. Gen Y girls will have to do the same when their time comes.

Tattoos today? Fake it, and be unapologetic about it.

I honestly don't know why anybody would bother with permanent tattoos in the first place when temporary tattoos (and sleeves) exist. Heck, you can even get a little tattoo printer now to just make up whatever.

Yes, all those tattoos are fake, but 100% of them have the "undo" built right in. Don't like the way one came out? WASH IT OFF, problem solved.

I've seriously thought about buying some temp tattoos and posting videos of myself with some applied just for the goof. Or better yet, purposely changing the tattoo to something different every so often in the same spot just to throw people off. I think that's funny.

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