Five to six decades ago, tattoos were regarded as a symbol of bad spirits, crimes and punishments. They also used to be watermarks of social outcasts and rebels, sailors, punkers, prisoners, bikers. Today, however, tattoos have evolved to a highly popular form of art. Whilst some find it intriguing, others consider it as a must-have. More and more Americans choose to wear a mark of ink on their bodies. Although having a tattoo has become a fashionable way to express ourselves we still don't know much about this kind of body art.
Let's take a look and see what made the ink so powerful and demanded in the modern world.
-
Tattooing used to be an efficient way of sending secret messages across enemy lines during wartime.
-
Tom Leppard is the name of the man whose body is 99.9% covered with ink. His tattoos are designed to look like as he has a skin of a leopard. Leppard ' s body does not have permanent ink only in the areas inside the ears and between the toes. Impressive!
-
However, Mr. Gregory Paul McLaren well-known as Lucky Diamond Rich is far more impressive than Mr. Leppard because he has his body 100% inked, and that includes the inside of his foreskin, mouth, and ears.
-
When it comes to being tattooed there is a tendency in the US that women get inked more often than men. According to a recent survey, released by the Oxygen Network and Lightspeed Research in 2012, 59% of American women have tattoos in comparison to only 41% of men.
-
The earliest known tattoos, dating from 400 B.C, have been found on female mummies in Nubia (a region along the Nile River). Their tattoos symbolize something different than an conceptual pattern. They portrayed the Egyptian god of revelry named Bes.
-
In the Ancient times, people applied rather weird practice to remove a tattoo. They took the scum on the bottom of chamber pot and mixed it with vinegar or pigeon faeces mixed with vinegar. They applied the blend as poultice on the spot and let it stayed that way for a long time. Other popular methods included mixture of a dried beetle with sulfur, wax, and oil.
-
Today it’s common knowledge that if you want to get rid of a tattoo the best way to do it is through laser intervention. The laser permeates through the skin and breaks up the colouring agents so that they can be taken away in a natural way through the body’s immune system. Black ink absorbs more laser waves, which makes it the easiest color to eliminate whereas green and yellow come much harder to wipe out.
-
Women are highly likely to have their tattoos removed than men.
-
Those of you who wish to experience the thrill of having a permanent ink on their skin but still fear whether to get that far, there are plenty of alternatives. You can start with a temporary tattoo just to see what it feels like. Instead permanent tattoo many women like prefer the so-called henna tattoos. Hanna dye derives from a plant and women have been using it to draw abstract patterns on the skin and color their hair for thousands of years. Natural henna lasts only a few days. As the skin exfoliates, the designs fade away. It's worth a try!
-
Motley Crew drummer Tommy Lee entered the Guinness Book of Record making a world record. In 2007 he became the first man who got tattooed in the mid air during a private flight to Miami.
-
The most popular images women tattoo on their bodies are hearts and angels.
-
Have you heard of UV tattoos? Of course you have. But do you know that they are made of ink substance that goes completely invisible in daylight but under ultraviolet light it starts to glow very brightly.
-
Tattoo machines appeared about a hundred years ago, in the late 19th century. What is surprising about them is the fact that they haven’t slightly changed ever since.
-
It takes years to master the art of ink. In the past people considered tattooing as a sacred craft that only naturally talented can learn and master. Nowadays, modern tattoo artists join various training programs to which inquire years of study and self-dedication.
-
A few of American presidents, among them Franklin Pierce, Dwight Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, James K. Polk and Andrew Jackson, are rumored to have tattoos. Roosevelt is the only who has publicly admitted it.
