Ink, Inc.

In Consumed: The Tattoo Aesthetic: Why, despite years of trendiness, the old-school tattoo tradition hasn’t faded.

It has been several years since even Ozzy Osbourne could see that tattoos were overexposed: “To be unique, don’t get a tattoo. Because everybody else has got tattoos!” Yet despite the fact that tattoo imagery is everywhere — serving as the basis for reality shows, as a de facto part of N.B.A. uniforms and, increasingly, as an element in marketing — it retains its appeal as “an authentic and real part of culture,” one advertising executive recently informed The Chicago Tribune. What’s surprising about the popularity of tattooing is that it won’t seem to go away — that some tattoo imagery still seems authentic, even when it’s mainstream….

Continue reading by way of this New York Times Magazine link, which will probably expire in a week, or this Boston Globe link.

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