Tattoo Undo

Students at Orange High School in Orange County, California are in for a
shock. The school's principal has banned hundreds of copies of the school
magazine which had a cover adorned with a large tattoo in Old English Script
on a man's back. The principal denounced the magazine and said he was
banning it because the tattoo was gang-related and article inside was
inappropriate.

The OC Register reported on the story, "Students in an advanced journalism
class put together Pulp magazine as an end-of-the-year project. The cover
story reported that a number of seniors had gotten tattoos and explored the
symbolism behind some of the inked images, editor-in-chief Lynn Lai said. It
was titled, "Tattoo Mania. The front cover illustrated the story with a
computer-enhanced image of a man's back tattooed with Old English letters
and a picture of the school's mascot, a panther."

The principal's magazine ban has caused uproar among students, who are no
protesting that their rights have been violated. This comes on the wake of
many recent controversies surrounding teenagers and tattoos at schools.

When I was teenager, tattoos were still considered a taboo for parents,
family members and in many cases society in general. Has the tattoo taboo
shifted, or are we still seeing distraught parents? Nowadays it seems as if
when a teenager gets body-art against his/her parents will, the parents have
an easy outlet to get rid of it - tattoo removal. With tattoo removals
becoming more readily accessible and cost-effective, parents may be in luck
and less heartbroken when their son or daughter comes home clad in tattoos.

A parent blogger from the Norwich Bulletin said, "Tattoos, which seem like
such a drastic step - and one with potentially harmful health consequences -
could be revisited for a stricter age limit, as drinking was when it was set
at 21. At 21, people are young adults who are entering the workplace, and
less likely to be swayed by wanting to be part of a group identity, but are
rather guided by the person they have become."

However some parents would like to see the tattoo age increased to 21, much
like the drinking age. For many feel their children are not mature enough at
18 or even 19 to get a tattoo.

For the last decade the Providence Tattoo Removal Program has been helping former gang members erase their past. The removal clinic is comprised of nurses fully trained to administer laser removal to get rid of anti-social and gang related tattoos. The program has revolutionized the lives many young men and women. Most are hoping to reenter the workforce and having such visible gang tattoos from their past definitely lowers and hinders their chances of getting a job.

The positive side of this is that the success rates have been great. According to KHTS radio, "Patients “pay” for the free services by doing community service at the clinic or in their neighborhoods, as well as going to school to finish diplomas or get GED certificates. The program was targeted as “pork” by critics of the federal budget that was passed early in 2009 because a $200,000 grant for a second laser machine was requested by Congressman Howard Berman, but it’s anything but a money waster. Annually, 12,000 treatments are completed and 80 percent of those treated have succeeded in finding a new job or obtaining a promotion."

Programs like Providence will hopefully begin to pop up all over the states and change the lives of many former gang members looking to restart.

In the past few months a number of government agencies, police force and fire departments have been implementing tattoo bans for employees. Many are being urged by employers to hide their visible tattoos or get them removed. In fact the trend appears to be spreading to some school districts. In one situation a young boy has been barred from coming to school because of his five visible tattoos.

AsiaOne News said, "The school's student handbook states that the school does not allow students to have tattoos and, should a student be caught with one, he or she can return only after starting laser treatment to remove it. But the boy is adamant that he has done nothing wrong. 'If tattoos are not allowed in school,' he said, 'why then is there no minimum age (for getting a tattoo)?"

Such stringent rules have yet to be the norm among most school districts, but the potential does exist.

The tattoo industry in recent years has become wildly popular and mainstream. As celebrities like David Beckham and Megan Fox make tattooing the ‘it’ trend, parlors are spurring up as are younger demographics. It has been seen that tattoo parlors are opening up in more mainstream locations, whereas a few years ago you would only see them in dodgy corners and lower socioeconomic locations. Now mainstream malls and popular family spots have tattoo parlors on every corner like a Starbucks.

For example in Tampa Bay according to St. Petersburg Times in Florida, “Perhaps the surest sign: They've come to an upscale shopping district and even a mall near you. FAT Ink — the acronym stands for fashion, art, tattoo — opened last week in an 1,100-square-foot space near Macy's in Westfield Citrus Park, with plans to open another in Westfield Brandon in four to six months.”

Tattoo shops in retail locations is showing how the industry both for tattooing and removal is becoming widely accepted.

Tattoo artists are cautioning people interested in getting a tattoo to be sure of cleanliness and credibility of the parlor and artist. Health officials in Canada have told the press that there has been a recent case with a tattoo parlor that used unsterilized tattooing instruments, nor were the artists using antiseptics. The disturbing news is now forcing health officials to take more stringent action against tattoo parlors and health guidelines.

The Canadian Press said, “A veteran tattoo artist says people should be very careful and ask lots of questions about cleanliness and safety before baring their skin for a tattoo. The warning comes after customers of Zipp's Tattoo parlour in Edmonton were urged to get tested for HIV and hepatitis after it was closed due to unsanitary conditions.”

A number of states in the US have also taken initiative to implement more regulations against tattoo artists and parlors with hopes of eliminating health issues and not allowing minors to get tattoos without the guidance of their parents.

The tattoo industry in recent years has become wildly popular and mainstream. As celebrities like David Beckham and Megan Fox make tattooing the ‘it’ trend, parlors are spurring up as are younger demographics. It has been seen that tattoo parlors are opening up in more mainstream locations, whereas a few years ago you would only see them in dodgy corners and lower socioeconomic locations. Now mainstream malls and popular family spots have tattoo parlors on every corner like a Starbucks.

For example in Tampa Bay according to St. Petersburg Times in Florida, “Perhaps the surest sign: They've come to an upscale shopping district and even a mall near you. FAT Ink — the acronym stands for fashion, art, tattoo — opened last week in an 1,100-square-foot space near Macy's in Westfield Citrus Park, with plans to open another in Westfield Brandon in four to six months.”

Tattoo shops in retail locations is showing how the industry both for tattooing and removal is becoming widely accepted.

Now if you thought Twitter was a fad, a trend of the minute for today’s ADD ridden impatient Gen-Ys you may be wrong. Twitter has not only revolutionized the voice of the young Iranian community yearning for freedom, but it is becoming a tattoo artist’s revolutionary dream as well. Inked up tattoo artist Thomas Pendelton TVs new stud is getting Tweets from fans asking him to tattoo their Twitter username.

Wired said of this new phenomena, “To qualify, Twitter users must follow Pendelton then tweet @ThomasPendelton with hash tag #A&EWed10 stating why (and where) they want their Twitter handle permanently inked onto their body.”

Pendelton has said he will be announcing the tweeting tattoo winner on TV this coming Wednesday at 10pm on his show Tattoo Highway.

A Belgian teenager seems to be in dire need of tattoo removal, after she fell asleep while getting a tattoo and ended up with 56 tattoos all over her face. The teenager is now suing the tattoo artist who did it to her. The young girl is the ideal candidate for tattoo removal, especially since she has told papers that she is mortified to walk outside her house.

News.com.au reported on the tattoo-clad teen, “Kimberley Vlaeminck, 18, was left sporting 56 black stars of various sizes on the left side of her face, from nose to ear and brow to chin. "When he started the tattooing I didn't want to feel the pain and so I went to sleep. I had got up at five in the morning," she said. "I woke up when he was starting to tattoo my nose and I saw what he had already done. I counted 56 stars, it's frightening," she told the Flemish daily Het Laatste Nieuws.”

She also told reporters she would be undergoing laser tattoo removal to get rid of the 56 stars. The dispute between the teen and the tattoo artist is heating up as well, he claims she was awake the entire time and consented to the facial tattoos.

In some cases it’s a good thing that people do not have their tattoos removed. An automatic system for matching and retrieving tattoos is said to help investigators and law enforcement to solve crimes. Law enforcement often times take photographs and note of people’s tattoos and scar that can aid in identifying the criminal later in line-ups or with witnesses.

SPIE reported on the tattoo biometrics, “A wide variety of biometric systems have been developed for automatic recognition of individuals based on their anatomical (e.g., fingerprint, face, and iris) and behavioral (e.g., signature and gait) characteristics. Despite tremendous technological progress, there are many situations where primary biometric traits are either not available or are difficult to capture, or where the quality of the sensed images is poor. In such cases, ‘soft’ biometric traits such as height, sex, eye color, ethnicity, scars, marks, and tattoos can assist in identifying a person.”

In some cases tattoos can be helpful tools and removal is in fact detrimental to such things.