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Dear Mom, I have a tattoo

Moms don't like tattoos... Or rather, maybe they like them, but on other people's children. Because let's face it, in my short life I have never seen a mother jump for joy to see her son return home with a tattoo.

Why are parents so belligerent about tattoos? Does it depend on the parents or is it a generational problem? Will today's millennials, accustomed to seeing and accepting tattoos as completely normal, be just as harsh on their children's tattoos?

These questions haunted me unresolved for several years. My mother, for example, considers it a sin to “paint” a body that is born perfect. Each roach is beautiful to its mother, but the basic idea is that my mother, a woman born in the 50s, count tattoos as damage, that which deprives the body of beauty, and does not decorate it. “It's as if someone was tinkering with Venus de Milo or a beautiful statue. That would be blasphemy, wouldn't it? Says the mother, confident that she has a convincing and irrefutable argument.

Honestly ... there is nothing more dubious!

Artist: Fabio Viale

In fact, I challenge anyone to say that the tattooed Greek statue Fabio Viale "Ugly". She may not like her, she might not be considered as beautiful as a statue without tattoos, but she is definitely not “ugly”. She's different. Perhaps he has a more interesting story. In my opinion, because we are talking about tastes, it is even more beautiful than the original.

However, it should also be said that a few years ago, tattoos were considered stigma of convicts and offenders... This legacy, which, unfortunately, is less preserved even today, is particularly difficult to eradicate.

For women in particular, the most common intimidation tactic is, "Think about how your tattoos will look as you get older." or even worse: “What if you get fat? All tattoos are deformed. " or again: “Tattoos are not graceful, but if you get married? And if you have to wear an elegant dress with all this design, how do you do it? "

An annoyed snort isn't enough to get rid of such comments. Unfortunately, they are still very frequent, as if women duty and obligation to always be beautiful according to the most common canon, as if elegance were a requirement. And who cares about what tattoos will look like when I get older, my eighty-year-old skin will look even better if it tells my story, right?

However, I understand the reasoning of the mothers. I fully understand this and wonder how I would react if one day I have a child and he tells me he wants a tattoo (or that he already has one). I, a lover of tattoos, accustomed to seeing them, and not as a stereotypical sign of convicts, how will I react?

And be careful, in all this reasoning I'm talking about myself, who has long passed through the magic doors of adulthood. Because no matter how old you are, 16 or 81, mothers always have the right to speak their minds and make us feel a little more.

And if I'm allowed to conclude one more little truth, Mom is right in many cases: how many ugly tattoos, done at 17, drunk in a basement or in a friend's dirty room, could have been avoided if someone had listened to that person's indignation. girl. Mother?

Source of images of tattooed statues: Website of the artist Fabio Viale.