Tattoos aren't really more common. You just got older and were exposed to more folks who had obtained them.

I might want a tattoo, not sure, still. After boot camp, it was THE THING to do.

BUT WHAT IN THE HELL is the fascination with tattooing your own fucking name to yourself? Seriously, guys? Are you that absent-minded you forget your name and have to write it down permanently?

Then the other night some girl showed me a pic of her tattoo on her hip. JRR Tolkien's signature. Nerd++. Right.

Another of my buddies from boot camp got the Umbrella Corp logo tattooed onto his upper arm, slightly variant. It looks alright.

http://c4.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/i...8796c7aaaf.jpg

Actually, in North America tattoos are much more common, Zeph.

According to Alfred Gell and Demello's books on the subject, in the 50's you were looking at roughly 8% of the US population, and now it's up over 30. So a huge increase, actually.

As anyone who knows me already realises, I'm a huge booster of tattoos. Call it modern tribalism, art, expression, whatever. I've done years of research on them, amassed about 4000 pages of people's personal stories concerning their own work, and an endless supply of stories and experiences from artists. If you have any real interest in this subject, you really should have already read Gell and Demello, but if you haven't, do yourself the favour.

:)

I didn't miss the historical information, I treated the comment with the same disdain I reserve for every American who says they're Irish or Italian or French or anything other than American. You can call yourself British or French or fucking Zulu if you want to but if your grandparents were born in America, you're American and nothing else. That's how the rest of the world sees you and frankly that's how the passport office and an embassy would see you.

I'll never understand why if you ask pretty much any American what their heritage is they'll never say American and instead list off a bunch of different European nations neither they nor their parents of grandparents ever set foot in but that's a discussion for another thread.

I think more people have tattoos now as it's far more socially acceptable. As LeHah said in his post from the 19th Century, once upon a time tattoos in Western society were the preserve of sailors and the like or even the mark of being a criminal. It wasn't that long ago that getting a tattoo on your lower arms would preclude you from getting a job where your arms were on show, now very few people give a fuck (Over here anyway, one imagines that in the more loopy bible bashing parts of the world the stigma pervades).

Just want to clear something up: Are you talking about Americans who say their nationality is Irish, Italian, French etc., or their ethnicity?

Both confuse me to be honest. I guess it's primarily because people in Europe don't talk about their ethnicity in terms of nations. You'd never hear anyone over here describe themselves as Welsh stock, ever. They'd say they were Welsh, because they or their parents come from Wales (Which would technically make them English as it happens) but other than that, people over here think of themselves far more broadly in terms of ethnicity than Americans do. You're pretty much Scandinavian (Blonde or ginger, pale skin), Northern European (What Wvlf is calling Welsh, Dark hair, pale skin), Eastern European (Dark hair, kinda mongy looking) or Mediteranean (Dark hair, dark skin) or more likely a huge mix of everything. In fact people never refer to their ethnicity at all, the place of one's birth is far more important to people here than where your ancestors may or may not have come from.

I suspect that's mainly to do with the huge amount of emigration that goes on over here, the far wider mix of ethnic backgrounds in general, the much greater mingling of ethnicities here compared to the US, the centuries of wars providing deeply ingrained national hatreds and hilariously fluid borders and the fact that America is a very, very young nation. The concept of being "American" didn't even exist a couple of hundred years ago and one can understand how the religious nuts and criminals who populated the place would have struggled to find a collective identity once ties with Europe were fully broken.

I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just a weird concept for a European (Or at least all the Europeans I ever discussed it with) and even most second generation Indian or Pakistani or Jamaican immigrants here would call themselves British if you asked them. Obviously they know where there families are from but the question "Where are you from" evokes a nationality response here rather than an ethnicity one you'd expect from a Merkin.

I think it's because a lot of America's history is tied to its immigration. It's actually pretty neat to know which parts of the world your family is from, and how they all got to America. For example, on my mom's side they've been in America since Virginia was considered frontier, and at one point were massacred by Native Americans. My dad's side, on the other hand, came from Poland and Russia through Ellis Island within the last 100 years.

(And, for the record, when people as where my family's from I say New York and Virginia. And I'm a Pennsylvanian.)

Well, yes. I am a white Amurken. But where people's people come from tends to explain more about ethnicity than simply saying where your parents were born.

On that end, both of them are small town Western Pennsylvanian, and I'm an army brat so I'm not from anywhere.

Heh, I think another reason for the difference is that perhaps despite of the cultural diversity here but more likely because of it, people will go out of their way not to appear to be an outsider so going around telling everyone you're Irish at a school in the south east of England would just get you picked on, especially Irish what with them all being child murdering terrorist fucks and all.

And it's easy to forget how stupidly huge your country is at times. Compared to the US, Europe is a collection of state-sized nations, all wildly different and all with a long histroy of fighting each other so tribal mentality is always going to come to the forefront. Like I said, I don't think you're wrong to identify yourselves in terms of your ancestors, it's just a bit weird hearing what to us looks like a white, American guy banging on about how he's Italian or Irish or whatever, given that he quite clearly isn't and is in fact just another American in our eyes.

That and being proud of being Irish is the most wrong thing ever.

I've wanted a tattoo for a long while now but I'm still not sure what I want done. Naturally this means I probably won't get one for at least a few more years. The ones I've wanted done I always thought would be best across my shoulders, but that might change, depending on my final decision.

So yeah, I've got no qualms with tattoos. Even more common themes can be alright if they've got a bit of original flair to them. For instance one of my mates has a tribal band around the top of his arm, but since he designed it himself rather than just picking it off a wall in a tattoo parlour, I quite like it. Some do really make me wonder what the fuck the person was thinking, but again, their body etc. One girl I know has a pair of strawberries on her ankle, because speaking in terms of teh mighty internetz she is referred to as Strawberry Yoghurt. She may as well have gotten a Muller Corner tattoo because that's how ridiculous I think that makes her.

A question which I really should know the answer to: is it possible to tattoo over scars?

Scars shouldn't stop a tattoo from taking to the best of my knowledge. Skins skin as far as that goes but it may hurt more or less than regular skin.

A good tattoo artist should know what he will and wont work on, or what looks best or whatever. I'd say the best advice I can give you is find a good place and start asking questions.

As far as I know, tattooing over scars [to essentially hide them] is fairly common. I've seen a few done by the artist that did my tattoo, but I'm not sure if all artists will do it. Again, probably just best to ask around.

But white Italians don't look "just white" to me. It's as different from other varieties of white as Japanese are from the other varieties of azn.

Actually board activity?!?! WHAT?!

I don't mind if other people have tattoos but I wouldn't get one for myself. Tattoos are a very big deal in Asian culture because only the mafia get them, but thats not really the reason. It just seems like a waste of money and I don't think any design I would get today would be as significant later in life.

But you if you reckon you can tell the difference between an Italian, a Spaniard, a Portugese, a guy from the south of France, a Greek, a Magyar, Turk or perhaps even Morrocan, you're lying or deluding yourself.

And no matter how Italian a guy looks, as soon as he opens his mouth and you hear that American accent, chances are he's an American. No amount of using the word Mamma and eating pasta can hide that.

I don't know I can fairly regularly tell the difference between an Italian a Spaniard and a Greek. The rest not so much plus give a family a few years of marrying with the large mix that's common around here and the waters do get muddied more than a bit. Eventually it does just turn into generic swarthy guy.

A lot of this seems to come down to terminology when you claim an ancestry it tends to really mean I'm an American + this other random cultural influence. With the I'm American bit just being assumed generally as they're used to talking to others using the same framework. It's partially the fact that just being American can be really nebulous in what it means seeing as there's variance from region to region and then even within that from state to state.

Even state isn't all that helpful at times seeing as we have quite a few states bigger than a lot of countries. So we at times dice it down smaller and smaller until you get to my people came from whatever place. Plus in some area's large groups from that one other country were forced to live together in tight enough quarters for long enough to to force them to have their own subculture. Not that a Italian American is going to be much like a real Italian most likely but they're still different enough from the standard here to need a sub identifier.

Not that it matters much outside the U.S. and claiming it at someone in Europe probably isn't helpful in the least but you know people get used to their cultural identifiers and don't think too much about it before speaking.

I probably would never have a tattoo since I have a dozen other better uses for the money to afford such luxury and I'm not keen on having any permanent markings on my body. However, if I were to choose anything, I'd have this on my back (I assume somewhere between my shoulder blades so it can be appropriately hidden for most occasions).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...amilycrest.jpg
It's my family crest(?), so I assume it would have sufficient enough meaning.

Do what my sister did and get me drunk enough to pay for it.

We use Italian as an excuse to be temperamental, and we use Irish as an excuse to drink a lot, or to proclaim magical healing powers from Guinness.

Wow, that's a pretty sycophantic coat of arms. Castles generally mean solidarity and feathers obedience. The chevron in the middle can also be awarded for faithful service. If that's a genuine coat of arms handed out by the College of Arms, one of your ancestors quite possibly spent a lot of time on his knees. Also, the helmet is the wrong colour, gold helmets are only for royalty but then it'd be facing forward with the visor open. A sideways helmet with the visor shut denotes an esquire, rather than any sort of nobility and should be steel. The white bits of the mantling should be blue too as the mantling should be in the same metal and colour as the body of the arms, in this case gold and blue. You're also missing a wreath around the top of the helmet.

I'm not trying to diss your family crest here, I just think it'd be worth getting it right (Assuming it's a proper College of Arms piece and not just something someone made up once) if you ever seriously thought about getting it permanently etched into your skin.


I'm quite a heraldry nerd, that's what comes from growing up in a town with a Norman castle, surrounded by other towns with Norman castles.

Shit makes an excellent Tramp Stamp.

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/4569/tramp.jpg

Ha ha ha, I'll pay £20 if someone has this done.

I'm down with tattoos. I'm sleeved and I don't regret it yet. On the other hand, I've closed my piercings. I first lost interest in my septum ring (started wearing it invisibly 2 years ago) and the rest followed. I carry myself upright and have never had trouble in society, even with dreadlocks. By coincidence, I cut them off today. I walk that blurry line where 'nerd' meets 'hip.' Non-thuggish, artistic presentation. I have a kid on the way so I'm settling down.