Tattoos

I got my third tattoo last saturday. (I got it done at 10am - I had no idea it was possible to schedule an appointment for a tattoo  at 10 am at Lisbon's most bohemian neighborhood, but it just so happened that my super cool tattoo artist was an early bird.)

Here it is. It says 'Made in Portugal', like those scratchy little tags inside our clothes. It's got to do with my work and with my personal life, of course. But more on that some other time.

I had my Roy Lichtenstein yellow brushstroke (below) done at the same place last year, so as to mark a defining time in my life, as well as in order to manifest my endless admiration for this brilliant artist, of course, and last but not least, with the grand purpose of having such an interesting, conceptually charged image painted on me forever.

This brushstroke tattoo happened 10 years after my first one, which I somehow managed to convince my parents  into letting me do at age 17. Main argument: my brothers have tattoos, why can't I? I was a bona fide metalhead at the time and decided to express my love for my music via - thank the lordy - something simple and graphic: a stylized lightning bolt à la AC/DC. Dumb as I was at the time, I'm totally patting myself on the back for averting a disaster. Well done, kid.

I love the idea of tattoos but I am very fussy about which tattoos I like, though. I dislike both huge designs and the micro tats that are so fashionable these days, which seem just a bit too decorative to me sometimes. And I think tattoos can be perfectly chic, too. Take those lovely Valentino adverts, for instance, featuring photographer Terry Richardson's heavily tattoed arms. I LOVED these adverts at the first milisecond I looked at them because of the cool way in which they mix luxury with something usually perceived as subversive and underground. Who in this day and age is still one-dimensional anyway? In fact, I love showing mine off with girly outfits. 

I really like seeing mine when I wear girly clothes and jewelry, like pearls and stuff like that. It's like they can just neutralize the snobbery of chic and balance the bimbo out of girly, which is just what I can't stand. What's the point of living a good life if you're removed from the intensity of the real world? It's like accepting that we are not meant to last forever (so what's the point of being so precious?), yet, at the same time, recognizing in a tattoo a very serious manifesto of personal taste. 

Am I careless about the inevitability of aging? I'd say the money I spend at Kiehl's suggests otherwise! How will my tattoos look when I'm 70? Not too bad I hope, but I don't ever want to be a person with nothing to say. Not now and certainly not in 40 or 50 years.

Anyway, I gathered a few images of people with interesting styles and tattoos. Here they are:

 (image above sourced from garancedore.fr)

And my favourite, Alice Dellal: 

star of my favourite Chanel adverts: