MARCH 2000 — EDITOR'S COMMENT
What on earth happened to the power of tattoos? Man, I was in the supermarket the other day and some four-year-old kid being pushed around by his mom in the grocery cart blurts out for all to hear, "Hey, cool tattoos!"
I guess it's a sign of progress that walking down the main drag in a tank top in Pasadena, California, doesn't frighten the civilians. Actually, it's rather disturbing is what it is.
People used to pay good money to see the tattooed lady at the sideshow. In fact, Captain Don Leslie became a legend from people gawking at his body ornamentation. Not any more. Hey, the bank president's secretary has a butterfly on her ankle.
Look at it this way, we're such slaves to fashion that a description of a tattooed pickpocket who just swiped your purse would probably fit 20 people in a four block radius. Bell-bottomed trousers are the rage—we all get bell-bottomed trousers. The ladies have their bra straps showing—all the ladies have their bra straps showing. One person in your crowd gets a tattoo, everyone gets a tattoo. It's like a rite of passage. Like going out for tackle football in high school.
This is all fine and good. We all want to be liked. We all want to be accepted. And it is rather pleasant to enter a restaurant and be treated like all the other patrons, instead of having the hostess recoil in terror at the Bob Robert's skull and crossbones on your shoulder. In fact, while you're waiting in line to be seated, I bet you get asked where you got your tattoo, or did it hurt, or whatever. Very comforting—especially when you're in some dicey situation and the six-foot-four serial killer with a baseball bat freezes halfway through his swing and asks, "Is that a Paul Booth on your elbow?"
Ah yes. Cozy. Warm and fuzzy. Politically correct. Yeah, right.
But I'll tell you something: Tattoos were a lot more fun when the kid in the shopping cart did a double-take.
—Bob Baxter, Editor in Chief