Is it worth getting yourself tattooed?

The US Marines have recently decided to ban the wearing of large tattoos, giving the reason that they do not represent traditional values.

At the beginning of April head and neck tattoos were banned along with any tattoos visible when Marines are wearing shorts and a T-shirt.
Ironically, the US Army has recently decided to relax its policy on tattoos in a bid to encourage more recruits to sign up.
They will now be allowed tattoos on their heads and the backs of their necks as long as they do not portray anything extremist, indecent, sexist or racist.
In addition, women will now also be allowed to wear permanent eyeliner, eyebrow and lip make up as long as they not trendy.
More and more these days tattooing is considered an art form with people spending hundreds and even thousand to permanently mark their bodies with depictions of things they hold dear to their hearts.
Television programmes such as Miami Ink are dedicated to the skill of drawing on flesh and art galleries the world over hold exhibitions devoted to tattoos.
For the Navy tattooing is an unofficial tradition with many sailors picking up tattoos in every port they call at.
“It a way of marking time on your body” says Braddon Markquart, who is currently based in Bahrain. “Ten years down the line you can look at a tattoo and remember a time and place that usually has a great story to go along with it”.
Although tattoos are commonly found in the armed forces they’re in no way exclusive to them.
In recent decades tattoos have experienced resurgence in popularity in all corners of the world.
Movie stars, musicians, models and sports personalities have gone a long way to turning tattoos into a mainstay of popular culture but where does the practice originate from?
A Eurasian practice dating back to at least the Neolithic period, mummies dating back to the second millennium BC have been found bearing tattoos while in Japan it’s a tradition that seems to go back some 10,000 years.
Tattoos have meant a host of different things to different cultures throughout the ages.
For the Maori, indigenous to New Zealand, the Ta moko was a permanent marking predominantly on the face that signalled status and rank and was used as an important marker between childhood and adulthood.
It was different to the tattoos we are used to today in so much as the skin was carved rather than punctured resulting in grooves instead of a smooth surface.
The Japanese use the word ‘irezumi’ (insertion of ink), while the word tattoo is used for non-Japanese designs.
The use of irezumi for spiritual, decorative, and status purposes is believed to date back to the Jomon or Paleolithic period (approximately 10,000 BC) though by the Kofun period (300-600 AD) they began to take on negative connotations when tattoo marks began being placed on criminals — much like in ancient Rome where runaway slaves were often marked with mottos such as “I am a slave who has run away from his master”.
The use of tattoos in Japan fluctuated in the centuries to follow and while they were still used as punishment, they also went through minor decorative fads. It was in the Edi period (1600-1868 AD) that Japanese decorative tattooing started to develop into the advanced art form we see today, although some of the older generations still see them as having criminal connotations.
Traditional irezumi are still created by hand-tapping the ink into the skin using non-electrical instruments with needles made of sharpened bamboo or steel.
In Cambodia, tattoos (or Yantra) are used for self-protection as they are believed to have magical powers that can ward off evil.
Normally obtained from religious persons or monks, they are popular with army soldiers who are guaranteed by their tattoo artist that they will not receive any physical harm as long as they follow certain conditions.
Islam along with the stricter branches of Christianity and Judaism on the other hand forbid the practice of tattooing because it is regarded as mutilation.
Although the very essence of a tattoo is to be permanent, it is possible, to varying degrees, to remove unwanted body art and although complete removal is unlikely it is possible through the use of laser treatment, which reacts with the ink and helps it break down much in the same way natural fading from the sun would occur over long periods of time.
It is, however, an expensive and time consuming process that can result in permanent scaring so if you don’t yet have a tattoo but still want one after reading this article, think into your twilight years and ask yourself if you really want a wrinkly old floppy bit of skin showing off a faded design when you’re in your 80s?
If the answer is no, but you really want one now while you’re still young, do what I did; put them somewhere that isn’t likely to be exposed in your later years … and before you jump to any conclusions, I’m talking about the small of your back and between the shoulder blades.