Behind the Tattoo

Within American culture, tattoos have been seen as taboo. From the middle of the 1800s to the 1900s, they were often seen on criminals, bikers, sailors, and military men. However, in modern times, tattoos have become far less controversial and have even started showing up in our schools. High school students have been showing them more publicly sporting simple designs or even having elaborate half-sleeves covering their arms. Many students even have more than one tattoo, myself included.

Alex Vickery was one of the first to publicly discuss and show their first tattoo. They’ve been seen sporting a simple flower wrist bracelet saying “Type 1 Diabetic” with the medical caduceus on the inner wrist. But what do the faculty and teachers at Silver Creek think of this increase in ink?“I think tattoos are very personal, and I think that they are our way of expressing ourselves.”, the assistant principal & Athletic director at Silver Creek said.

Mr. Decamillis isn’t wrong, if you’ve asked anyone with tattoos why they got that tattoo or what it means to them, most of the time they’ll tell you a story, or about someone close to them, all of these stories and people are some of the reasons on why people got tattoos.

As a student with tattoos, one of the most beautiful pieces I have is in memory of someone. It is a black rose on my left inner forearm, it’s a matching tattoo to the one my father had on his right inner forearm before he passed.

“Tattoos are a way for people to express some of the things they have experienced and have gone through,” DeCamillis said.

Many of the Adults that I’ve talked to with tattoos have a tattoo that is in memory of someone they love who passed away. Yet Tattoos aren’t always so serious and sad in meaning, there are plenty of people with tattoos for other meanings and reasons. To use myself as another example, I have a bicep band tattoo that is of an Ourabours and is a permanent reminder that life changes and is a never-ending cycle of endings and beginnings. Many tattoos are gifts and ways to remind you of deep connections with family, friends, and others. “I got my first tattoo at 15, it was a Father’s Day gift from my dad” Madison Harris, an ex-Silver Creek student said.

The popularity of tattoos started with Gen Z, however, the breakdown of the taboo of tattoos is older. It started around the generations of Gen-X and Millennials with people in white-collar jobs and other styles of jobs getting tattoos that weren’t visible or were easy to hide.

You would see people in the Military, people in certain religions, and criminals having tattoos because of their cultures, but the American Taboo of tattoos started to degrade at that point in culture, to now where you see students with tattoos and even full sleeves. With the rise of students with tattoos, some wonder how they are getting them due to the prerequisites and lack of availability of tattoo artists willing to tattoo people under the age of 18. Many tattoo artists will refuse to tattoo a minor due to the legal ramifications and the lack of frontal lobe development that people under the age of 18 have, so people will turn to Amazon, the worldwide shopping and shipping website that has millions of products, many of them being tattoo guns.

Some students are lucky enough to be able to get their tattoos done professionally, while a vast majority get their tattoos done by friends or people who don’t have the experience of a professional tattoo artist leading to bad tattoos, poor tattoo care, and improper sanitization of tools which can lead to infections.. There is a rise of students with visible tattoos and it has been on the rise for quite some time from older generations to now with a decrease in taboo and an increase in availability and access, to modern day where it has become a popular thing to have as a permanent accessory to symbolize a way of self-expression.