Can a person be considered hip and cool if they don have tattoos and piercings?
Tattos and piercings may not be as cool as once thought. http://tattoopgh.com/history.html Tattooing dates back to our tribal origins. As the above site shows, tattooing is not exclusive to the young and cool. The geezers pictured are modern pioneers of body art, jumping in before it was fashionable. Back in the day, tattoo enthusiasts were part of a freaky subculture. From Wikipedia: “In popular culture, ‘cool’ also often describes someone or something which conforms to a set of social or moral values perceived as countercultural, i.e., which challenge the norms, mores, or values of a dominant group or prevailing regime.” A component of hipness is being on the cutting edge. Each person who gets a tattoo is doing something edgy, bold, unconventional, taking a walk on the wild side. Hip, cool, with it. Possibly for the first time in its history, body art has become mainstream. How can the mainstream really be cool? The millions who visit their local storefront parlor to get a stamp of c
Hmmmm…. I currently have one tattoo on each of my shoulderblades. On my left, I have a black and red “tribal” butterfly. On my right, I have a smaller, lighter-colored butterfly. Both of them have symbolic meaning for me: the “tribal” butterfly, I got at a point in my life when I was beginning to discover my spiritual identity. The colors represent the death of my old self (black) and rebirth (the blood of Jesus Christ, through which mankind is saved.) I saw this point in my life as a sort of new birth- as butterflies are a symbol of new life, I thought it a fitting tattoo. The other butterfly I got on a whim, I admit it: I wanted to balance my body art- it seemed odd to me to have one shoulder unoccupied. I do not regret either of those tattoes because they both hold a great deal of meaning for me. Now, let me say this: unless I showed these tattoes to you, or told you about them, you would never know I had them. Most of my friends never even suspected I had them… and they thought
