Tattoos are amazing! They can be so beautiful and meaningful. I love getting tattoos and I know a lot about them. Here are 10 things you might not know about tattoos.
1. Tattoos can be incredibly beautiful and meaningful. I love getting tattoos because they are a way to express myself artistically.
2. There are many different types of tattoos, from traditional designs to more modern styles. No matter what your taste, there is sure to be a tattoo that you will love.
3. Tattoos can be quite expensive, depending on the size and complexity of the design. However, they are often worth the investment, as they last a lifetime.
4. Not everyone is suited for tattoos – some people may have allergies to the ink or experience adverse reactions after getting a tattoo. Make sure you consult with a professional before getting inked!
5. One of the first tattooed ladies in the United States, Nora Hildebrandt, sported 365 tats as a Barnum & Bailey Circus attraction during the 1890s and claimed she was forcibly inked while a captive of Native Americans. The truth was that her father, a German immigrant who also was one of the nation’s first tattoo artists, had no qualms about perfecting his craft on his own daughter.
6. Traumatic tattoos can occur if you fall on a rough surface, such as an asphalt parking lot, and debris is embedded under your skin. If it isn’t removed, it can permanently color your skin. A similar effect can be caused by firecrackers or other such explosions. Such unintentional “natural tattoos” were common among coal miners, whose frequent cuts were dirtied by coal dust and rarely cleaned properly.
7. In 2012, the mayor of Osaka, Japan, banned all city employees, including teachers, from having tattoos, which were considered by authorities to be a sign of the organized crime syndicate Yakuza. In January 2014, a 23-year-old school clerk became the first person punished under the ban. Her salary was docked for a month.
8. Tattooing was prohibited in New York City from 1961 to 1997, supposedly to prevent the spread of hepatitis B. But cultural objections appeared to be at work as well. One judge who upheld the ban wrote that “the decoration, so-called, of the human body by tattoo designs is, in our culture, a barbaric survival, often associated with a morbid or abnormal personality.”
9. The Maori of the South Pacific are famous for their intricate facial tattoos, called ta moko, and in the custom of preserving human heads, called mokomokai. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when Europeans started trading guns for mokomokai, it got so bad that slaves, who wouldn’t traditionally be honored with a moko, would be tattooed and decapitated and their heads cashed in for guns. H.G. Robley, an early ethnographer, wrote in 1896 about a European man declining to buy a head because the artistry wasn’t good enough. Acknowledging the point, the local chief gestured to his followers, asked the European if any of their tattoos sufficed and promised to prepare and dry the head quickly.
10. Among the news coming out of the Reagan administration in 1987 was the fact that Secretary of State George Shultz had a tiger tattooed on his rear end. Confirmation came from Shultz’s wife, Helena, as she chatted with reporters on a plane bound for China. “He got it at Princeton,” she explained, adding: “When the children were young, they used to run up and touch it and he would growl and they would run away.”
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