Tatoo You. Not Me.

On January 1,2007, all visual advertisement - billboards, neon signs, flyers - will be banned in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

If only the same legislation was possible for tatoos. I can't think of anything more boring and often more unappealing than exposed tatoos. There are so many and so many bad ones on display. Today at the gym I noticed a guy covered in tats that looked like they belonged on the cover of a fifth rate hip-hop album. What was he thinking? What does he think I'll think? Or some chick? Or some square? Yawns all around.

Do people really believe these eyesores signify edge? Edge is over, baby. Everything gets co-opted so fast, the only way to keep your revolution alive is to keep it in your head until you're ready to act. When the sociologist Clinton Sanders was making his career writing about tatoos, they were still the domain of the sailors, bikers and various demi-mondes. Not any more. The searchlight of commerce finds all nooks and crannies. Indeed, the minute you start broadcasting your "stance", your intentions or your biography, it's for sale on the open market. Any good Marxist will tell you capitalism produces a limited number of life stories anyways. You may think you're living a unique life but are you really? Watch the people that show up for consultations on these tatoo reality shows. How different are their motives? How different are their stories? Not very.

Tatoos, particularly those such as the one here, testify to a) the banality of edge and b) the growing fetish of exhibitionism. As the theologian Lincoln Swain noted in his great book, Dare to Defy, when everything and everyone is under surveillance, exhibitionism is the panic response. People may want recognition, they may want fame but more than that, they want to be seen on their own terms, no matter what. Stop looking at me. Look at me.

Someone asked me if I was going to put my boy's birthday on my arm. No thanks. I'll put a candle on his cake but that's it.