Tattoos for Sailors - Good or bad?

[Island Time O25]

I'm in my early 60s and come from a culture that frowned on female tats and barely tolerated men's, viewing all tats as either sailors' lot (best case scenario) or prison decorations. So it's ingrained in me (apologies to any CF tats wearing ladies) to view them as tramp stamps on women and gang signs on men who were never sailors.

In my 40+ years of various serious relationships can't recall even one woman with tats. But never actively pursued anyone just for that reason, I guess it's just the way it went. My current gf of many years is in her early 50s and of same culture and similar views on tats.

[fstbttms]

"Get off of my lawn, you damn kids!"

[Island Time O25]

[Bowdrie]

Notwithstanding that notched ears/noses, and tats and piercings have been used since at least Biblical times to identify someone as being "owned" by someone else, and still practiced by some societies that never really got out of the stone age, (even if they have a TV,) western society still in large part associates' tats and piercings as something for the tawdry, the cheap, and the lower classes.
Generally, those who move around in the higher circles of business, politics. and in the officer corps of the militaries don't have ink.

[Island Time O25]

In the 20th century, following two World Wars, in the West there appeared a marked trend toward primitivism in many aspects of life. Th8s was a knee jerk reaction to the utter destructiveness, both psychological and physical, of the industrialized modernity, including the two world wars. It has manifested itself in various facets, from art to design of houses to clothing and to displays traditionally associated with pre-historic art of tattooing. The West rediscovered massive tattoos when it opened up the Pacific basin 250-300 years ago. But the Otzi man comes to mind as proof of this skin decor being pretty much done by all pre-historic peoples world over. So while our technology for better or worse is firmly in the 21st century our psyche is still in the 5,000BC.