This article on tattoo removal really burned me up, no pun. Couldn’t you just come out and tell the kid “That’s what your daddy so enjoyed looking at while we were making you”? Cover ups are one thing, you shouldn’t be expected to live with a botch job or bad idea, but you essentially commit to a bigger, if only slightly so, piece.
Have you ever seen a tattoo post removal, before the ink filters down into the skin? It looks like a freaking radiation burn. And it costs you triple what getting the ink did. Thus the price of vanity. You can make the argument that augmenting the skin is an unnatural process, but it’s one that goes back millennia. What you’re doing there in that sterile (you hope) clinic with the greedy hack who can’t wait to play on your remorse like some some sort of ’skin preacher’ - that is an unnatural process!
Part of what drives me nuts about this is: validation for all of the “gee, I want a tattoo but don’t want like needles/pain” set, which I guess is fine - DON’T get one. And/or: if you can’t commit to pain, I’m not really sure what you’re doing on this planet. Plus it’s more evidence of superficiality and body image issues of the modern world. By the way, ever seen someone after they’ve had “cosmetic surgery”? It looks like they got the shit kicked out them. Then you consider what they paid for it…
Anyway, consider wisely before you make permanent decisions (breeding?), the image itself is every bit as important as “wanting to get a tattoo”, and posers/regreters: fuck off! Go run to the clinic and get financially raped - then on to the next step in your identity crisis. Tattooing of the brain is forever and you can’t “change your mind” once the cells are gone. Nevertheless, life goes on, deal with it-

Oh and by the way, everyone: you will die some day. Your “beautiful” shell and all the modifications you paid to have done to it will all become maggot food. Fight and fear this fact all you want to, but it won’t change…