Tats and Pins: An Opinion

I know these comments will place me firmly in the extremely mature bordering on fossilized status but I just don’t “get” the attraction of tattoos and piercings.  I saw a beautiful young lady at the gas station today, beautiful, at least until she turned around.  She had a tattoo creeping up her neck and both her nose and eyebrow were pierced.  I’m making an educated guess that both the tattoos and piercings were not confined to the areas on public display.  I just don’t get it.  I know these are all the rage in the youth of today as well as some really confused people my age.  When I was young the only people who had tattoos were convicts and sailors and maybe that forms the basis of my antipathy.  I know it’s an expression of individuality which in today’s mass media age people are searching for.  My own daughter, to her mother’s utter horror, has a tattoo.  Her husband, a member of a rock and roll band, has coated his arms and legs with tattoos.  I love both of these people, intensely, but I still don’t get it.  I think the basic human body is beautiful.  I have an almost reverent respect for the female body (something that still gets me in trouble with the wife).  I just do not understand why anyone would want to mar that perfection with a permanent marking.  I know most women understandably do not want to be objectified and maybe, subconsciously, this is their way of making themselves less physically attractive.  When I see an otherwise beautiful young lady coat her body with this “art” I find it a little bit creepy and most definitely, incredibly, less attractive.  I have the same disdain for the multiple piercings that are so popular.  I still don’t understand men with pierced ears (told you I was a fossil) but it seems that this too has taken on an almost competitive mode where people are exploring the most remote areas of their bodies to pierce.  Again, I find this even more disturbing and incredibly unattractive.  I apologize profusely if I have offended anybody, but like I said, I DON’T GET IT!!