Column by Dirk-Boris Rödel
"Hands, neck and face only when there's no room elsewhere!" - This is the attitude of many tattoo artists towards tattoos on parts of the body that are difficult or impossible to cover up.
I'm always a bit torn about that.
On the one hand, the tattoo artist naturally fulfills a certain responsibility towards young customers in particular, who may not yet be able to fully assess how tattoos on the neck and hands can affect job and apartment hunting, for example. Or how annoying and sometimes stressful it can be to be constantly asked about your tattoos. It is not for nothing that hand tattoos are also called "job stoppers", even today, when visible tattoos are not uncommon in professions where they would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. Even in private life or, for example, in conflicts with the law, permanently visible tattoos can still trigger prejudices in others and have an unfavorable effect - that's a shame and stupid, but it's also the social reality in which we live. And if tattoo artists also feel a responsibility for their customers and sensitize them to this, that's a good thing.
On the other hand, this restriction of tattoo artists to only tattoo the neck, face and hands of "experienced" customers could also be seen as a certain paternalism.
When I got my first tattoo at the end of the 80s, every tattoo, no matter what part of the body, no matter how big and no matter what motif, was an absolute rebellion, it made you an outsider, an outlaw, a rebel at the touch of a button. And rebelling, against whatever, is simply important in the process of growing up and has always been an essential part of modern Western tattooing. Today, however, tattoos are so common that you can no longer win a flower pot with a dragon on your arm in terms of rebellion - what used to be outrageous no longer raises an eyebrow.
So what else can young people do today if they want to rebel? The only social "don'ts" left are neck and hand tattoos. And these are often denied to them by those who, in their youth, only needed a howling wolf on their shoulder blade to acquire a bad boy image.
Sure, a neck tattoo at 18 can be a pretty stupid decision. But maybe there is such a thing as a right to make stupid decisions?
What I definitely don't accept at all, however, is this nonsense that you have to "earn" tattoos on your neck, hands and face. I can understand why a tattoo artist explains to customers the disadvantages of such tattoos, that he might not want to get them because he doesn't want to be responsible for the customer not getting an apprenticeship later on.
But this idea that the tattoo artist presumes to decide who "deserves" a neck tattoo, that he only grants the favor of such a tattoo to those who have already proven their seriousness with fuffzich other tattoos - no, really, how arrogant and presumptuous can you be! Perhaps it simply corresponds to a customer's personal aesthetic to only have the backs of their hands tattooed and they don't like skin tattoos on other parts of their body? How can you judge that? I think it's a bit arrogant when tattoo artists become the judge of what others can and can't have.
But that's just my own humble opinion and luckily there's enough choice of tattoo artists and studios today so that everyone has the chance to get the tattoo they want and that's important to them.
Text: Dirk-Boris Rödel
Graphic: Jonas Bachmann
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