Are the tides really turning against tattoos?

There’s a Kim Kardashian quote about tattoos from a 2009 interview with Wendy Williams that goes: “Honey, would you put a bumper sticker on a Bentley?” Over a decade later, it’s being used by women on TikTok without tattoos to flex their supposed superiority. This idea that women without tattoos are “clean girls” while inked women have “ruined” their natural beauty isn’t exactly new – but, in recent years, anti-tattoo rhetoric has been ramping up online. There are people who swear they lost “aura points” by getting a sleeve in their 20s, and others lasering off all the patch tattoos they got when they were 18. Then there are the teenagers making “throat” jokes in the comments sections of brand-new neck tattoos. But beyond social media, are the tides really turning against tattoos?

To get a tattoo is to inevitably change your relationship with time. Sure, you may think that your Hello Kitty with a gun or pasta tattoo is going to stay cool forever, but the reality is that it, too, will one day become a marker of the generation you were raised in. In the same way, our relationship with body modification mirrors larger cultural shifts – that’s why Shari Wei, the 23-year-old current resident at Girlxfriend in LA, believes that anti-tattoo rhetoric aligns with the rise of conservative aesthetics. “When we were younger, getting tattoos was some way of reclaiming our bodies; trends like ‘clean girl’ or ‘old money’ feel rather sterile, synonymous to a blank canvas or blank skin,” they say. “Perhaps people should ask themselves, why do they feel that something is of less value when it's widely accessible?” Today’s anti-tattoo sentiment also reflects a larger shift toward more conservative beauty trends, including heatless “trad wife curls”, “soft life” make-up, latte hair colours, extreme thinness and a push towards dissolving filler in favour of more subtle, less noticeable plastic surgery trends.

Tim Goergen, the owner of Gotham Tattoo Removal in Brooklyn, says he saw a “big influx” of tattoo removals after pandemic lockdowns ended. “A lot of people ordered tattoo machines off of Amazon and tattooed each other or themselves,” he says. “But, otherwise, I see a lot of people who want to fade old tattoos so they can get a coverup tattoo done and a few clients who wanted all of their tattoos removed because they felt that tattoos on their body didn’t represent who they were anymore.” As celebrities like Pete Davidson remove all their tattoos for upwards of $200,000, the reality is that tattoo removal is far more unattainable for many than getting a cheap (or DIY) tattoo. This means that having zero tattoos then becomes a symbol of wealth – 41 per cent of Americans under 30 now have a tattoo, but only a portion of those would have the means to laser them off. 

Despite the number of affordable tattoo artists available through Instagram DM’s today, Matt Lodder, senior lecturer in art history and theory at the University of Essex, says that in the late 19th century and early 20th century, tattoos were a sign of wealth. “The reason we have a tattoo industry in the first place is because rich people wanted to get tattooed,” he says. “These rich people would go to Japan and get Japanese tattoos to show off to their friends in London.” According to Lodder, the tide then turned on tattoos in the early 20th century with the rise of racial “science” – and the (extremely false) idea that white European people have never had tattoos. “Tattooing and class has always been a bit of a story, and it does vary from place to place, but the real connection that tattooing is a lower class thing to be doing didn’t really happen until the 1950s,” he adds. This then begs the question: what does it mean for the state of society that young people have started calling themselves “clean” for having no tattoos now?

Lodder thinks we can attribute some of the tattoo discourse today to anxieties about future work opportunities and a changing attitude towards professionalism. “Gen Z are anxious about success in the future, and that breeds a certain kind of conformity,” he says. “And then we have the death of subculture; now, you can have tattoos without being into tattoos at all, right?” Some of this backlash is entirely to be expected: after a heavily tattooed generation, you often have one that adopts the opposite style. For example, Gen X was known for big, colourful traditional tattoos, while millennials have revolted against that style with black-and-white patchwork tattoos that are smaller and more delicate. “Maybe being tattooed is so common now that not being tattooed is a way of standing out,” says tattoo artist Julien Vuillemenot (aka @Stonek.161). “Tattoos became accepted in society and not everyone put much thought into their designs.”

If today’s ignorant tattoos, blastovers, cybersigilist designs, memes and post-ironic tattoos were the antithesis of meaningful patchwork-style tattoos, then choosing to have zero tattoos could be seen as the antithesis to that. “Post-ironic tattoos may operate in a similar vein to Facebook memes like ‘no regrats’ to older generations, much of Gen-Z find quite a joy in the unserious nature of something meaningless,” says Wei. Where millennials searched for meaning within their tattoos, Gen Z’s more random (and sometimes regretful) approach to tattoos might be putting some people off getting inked altogether. Still, despite the social media comments turning against tattoos, Milla Sofia Press, owner of Girlxfriend, says these meme tattoos are more popular than ever. “This rhetoric isn’t hurting the tattoo world too much,” she says. “But I think sometimes we just want so badly to be able to change and look different; some may feel getting their tattoos removed is what they need to reinvent themselves.”

Alice Tran, a lifestyle influencer based in Virginia, got a “T” tattooed on her wrist just over a year ago. It stands for her last name – but when she shared it on TikTok, people commented saying that it looked like the Tesla logo. “It was a $30 tattoo, and I thought ‘I’ll just get a T’,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘You can’t really mess that up’”. The comments got to her: after the constant Tesla comparisons, she decided to get it removed. Eight painful and expensive laser removal sessions later,  the tattoo is still there, and now she’s considering a cover-up job. “A palm tree would be the easiest to put over a T, and it still goes with my vibes of being a summery beach girl,” she says. “Tattoos are a way to truly express yourself; there are so many reasons why someone gets them, but people are so quick to judge right off the bat.”

Get a tattoo, or don’t get a tattoo. Remove all your tattoos or wear your generational markers with a sense of pride and self-assurance. But what we’re not going to do is pretend that tattoos are “over” just because a few people online like to use Kardashian quotes to perpetuate conservative ideas around body modification. After all, it’s natural for tattoo trends to shift over time and contradict the generation before them – that comes with the nature of participating in something permanent and subversive. With this in mind, Press predicts that if having no tattoos becomes more common again, we’ll start to see the tide returning to people wanting to be tatted. (Some people just want to be ‘not like other girls’.) This is good news for those who don’t have $200,000 to remove their ink. “It’s commonly said that if you don’t like your tattoos and can’t get them removed, just get more,” she says.