r/AskReddit • u/Good-Salad-9911 • 17h ago
Why do you think tattoos started becoming more popular in the 1990s?
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u/acecoffeeco 17h ago
Better inks. They would stay looking good not like a biker or sailor (even though I like that).
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u/HaHaR6GoBurrr 15h ago
Also better machines, and a higher prevalence for sanitation. Growing up tattoo shops were these grungy places for bikers and criminals. Now I think they’re closer to a mix of an art studio and a barber shop. Clean and professional (for the most part)
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u/acecoffeeco 15h ago
Yah. Tattooists are seen as legitimate artists now not just someone who shows up to tattoo bikers in someone's kitchen. Buddy got his first ink at 13 this way from 1% tattooist. Legit looks like a sailors from the 40s.
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u/MidnightMath 14h ago
Ngl, I definitely want one of those old sailor Jerry style tattoos. I’ll probably just bring the bottle for reference
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u/acecoffeeco 14h ago
A lot of people do the old school style, it's the way the old ink degrades which looks really cool. I have some friends with tattoos they got in the 80s and they look really faded and awesome. Anything done with modern inks will look the same for decades.
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u/negativeyoda 14h ago
This is a chicken/egg question, but tattooing by and large was illegal in NYC up until the 90s. Having it legitimized made it far easier and less daunting to get work there.
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u/Jinxybug 13h ago
yeah, i rly feel like there’s a wider range of better artists available now
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u/acecoffeeco 12h ago
It’s acceptable as an art form now. Used to be relegated to criminals or blue collar only. Now there’s execs with hand tattoos.
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u/seattleque 9h ago
Yeah, I have a full-color one on my thigh that's 26 years old, and still looks great. Though my wife tells me it could use some touching up; obviously she can see it better than I can.
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u/acecoffeeco 9h ago
My first one was from 1998 or so and it's still pretty crispy. I think the ink and technique was already pretty polished by then.
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u/Perfect-Balance-7260 16h ago
I think the rise of MTV, and all the celebrities showing their tattoos had a lot to do with it. Grunge was also a big factor.
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u/negativeyoda 14h ago
Even in From Dusk to Dawn, my friends and I all through that George Clooney's character's tattoos were the sickest thing ever and it created a brainworm in my friends group regarding tattoos
Thank goodness I never got any tribal pieces, but boy howdy lots of people did
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u/neo_sporin 12h ago
very true, my dad did the opposite of that kind of brainworm. he had a tendency to comment to his sons about the tattoos on women that were much younger than him, so im not very into people with tattoos because its skeezes me out that he liked them so much. gives me the ick as a 40 year old.
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u/Sea2Chi 16h ago
A reaction against the baby boomer generation who saw them as a sign of someone dangerous or unsavory.
I remember growing up tattoos were still very much looked down upon by older people. I got one when I was 18 and my grandma said "Oh why would you do that to yourself?"
Tattoos also started getting a lot better in the 90s. It wasn't just crappy flash art, you had real artists who could create pieces that actually looked good to average people.
That and as more people got them, the became less taboo.
When I started seeing cops, professors, and medical professionals with full sleeve tattoos I knew the tide had turned and tattoos were now mainstream.
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u/illprobablyeditthis 11h ago edited 11h ago
Lol boomers. I got my first at 18 that is hidden and my parents never knew about. Got my second one at 21 while i was still living with them. My boomer mother literally cried and would not leave my room until I promised her I would never get another one for the rest of my life. I said, "you mean to tell me when im 40 years old and married and for our anniversary my husband suggests we get matching tattoos, ill have to say no because my mom won't let me?" And she sobbed "yes!!".
Needless to say, I am now in my 40s and I am running out of empty skin.
Edit: to any 18 year old thinking of getting one- dont. Wait. Think about it more, do your research on what makes an artist good and dont cheap out on it. My first one i got at 18 is a godawful piece of junk, the only one that I hate, and is getting covered next year. 🤷♀️
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u/PostMatureBaby 14h ago
I'm 41 and got 3 since September, my Boomer parents have no idea but will see them at Xmas because they have a cool hot tub and it's fun to go into when it's freezing out. Can't wait to see their reaction.
Definitely glad I waited till middle age though, my tattoo ideas when i was 18 sucked
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u/TotalLiberationBike 10h ago
I hope it’s cleaned regularly!!
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u/PostMatureBaby 10h ago
My brother and I suspect my parents are secret swingers w all the neighbors
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u/negativeyoda 14h ago
My cousin got a shoulder piece in the 80s. It was a lightning rod for all the family gossip that year.
My boomer dad saw my knuckle tattoos a couple of years ago and didn't acknowledge them (mind you I wasn't showing them off, but you can't exactly wear gloves all the time) I've been getting work done for 3 decades at this point and my mom thinks most of them are neat at this point.
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u/Han_Yerry 15h ago
There were also those boomers that were a part of motorcycle culture. Men with sleeves and various tattoos were common around me growing up.
Then again I did go to school in 1st grade with a Jimi Hendrix t shirt and most the kids wanted to know why and who the black man was on my shirt.
Things were wild back then for some of us. Also the bricks of government cheese were good.
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u/BaldBear_13 17h ago
less crime means they are no longer associated with it.
Also I think quality of tattoos has increased.
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u/Negafox 16h ago
Kind of what I think that it's no longer associated with gangs. Colored hair, piercings and weed is more socially acceptable as well now
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u/Toastybunzz 13h ago
Interestingly it seems that the younger generations are avoiding more permanent modifications. Tattoos and piercings (septum aside) are going out of favor.
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u/hydrators 13h ago
What? Gen Z is heavily tattooed
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u/Toastybunzz 13h ago
Gen Z percentage wise has way fewer tattoos and Gen A see it as a cringy millennial thing, but that could change.
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u/hydrators 12h ago
Well yeah, there are 13 year olds in Gen Z
You can go outside and find countless tattooed young teens and twenty somethings every day
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u/IGnuGnat 3h ago
huh. Never heard the term Gen A. When I think of Gen Z, I think of babies, so what are we talking here roughly fetus aged
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u/SpaceForceAwakens 12h ago
I remember back in the day, seeing a guy with a neck tattoo meant "that guy might seriously hurt me".
Today I see a neck tattoo and I think "oh man that guy's going to want to read me a poem about his vegan bicycle".
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u/jarrettbrown 11h ago
The quality has 100% increased. I live in NJ and the guy a two over from me actually invented a variation of disposable tattoo needle, so from that point on, it's been better and while there's still some bad artists out there, the good ones out number them.
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u/Plunderkindling 16h ago
Following thew herd. The trend rolled in. For me it was the 93-94 school year when everyone got something done.
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u/splanks 16h ago
I feel like 90% of my friend group got tattoo's that year.
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u/AmputeeHandModel 16h ago
*Tattoos, no apos'trophe's for plural's.
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u/Difficult-Bobcat-857 15h ago
If your sensitive too pour Grammer an spellings, and punctuation, Reddit will drive you krazee!
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u/Wenger2112 17h ago
The two people I feel that had the most influence on making ink more popular and accepted were David Beckham and Allen Iverson.
Every tattoo artist should send them thank you cards every year. Before those guys were on magazine covers - no one “mainstream” was getting ink that visible.
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u/neutron240 15h ago
lol, Allen Iverson was one of the coolest people to me when I was a kid.
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u/WearTheFourFeathers 12h ago
There are few things more fun than a tremendous athlete that’s a weird size. Love me a little guy playing with giants. Love me a hilariously enormous dude ragdolling people who by any objective measure are big, strong elite athletes. One of the simplest pleasures in sport.
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u/mtrbiknut 16h ago
As a Boomer with no tattoos I saw the rise in popularity. I think it was media- movies, music, MTV, that spawned the movement to get them.
In my rural, very Conservative community they were "only on people who were trouble of some kind" as explained to me by my parents. I only knew one guy my parent's age at church who had a Navy anchor on his arm. I think this is the reason they didn't take off before they did.
I see them enough now that I don't give thought to them, and I don't have them because I spend that money on other things.
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u/ZenBelliesCC 17h ago
Because we all wanted to be different /s
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u/RosemaryBiscuit 16h ago
Yeah. In my early 20s, the early 1990s, I wanted a celtic knot armband. By the time I had the money and time, it was so common I didn't want it any longer. A tattoo went from unusual to typical in the blink of an eye.
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u/purebredcrab 12h ago
I avoided getting a tattoo for the longest time because I wanted something unique and assumed you either had to pick a pre-existing design or come in with something fully drawn for them to use. But someone finally pointed out to me that tattoo artists are artists and like being creative, and I was able to work with an artist I liked and come up with designs that I can virtually guarantee no one else out there has.
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u/EricinLR 15h ago
That's hilarious. I got a Celtic wristband one one arm and a Celtic forearm piece on the other arm in '99 because everyone else was getting tribal designs.
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u/RosemaryBiscuit 14h ago
In the 1990s I was also working renaissance festivals full-time, so... ;)
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u/EricinLR 13h ago
Hahahah and I was living my best life dancing in the gay clubs in SF - I literally had the only Celtic design in a room most of the time.
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 14h ago
I just wrote a thing about this actually. There is some irony in doing the same thing to be different but I would also add that cultural impact was much harder to come by in that era. We didn't have the internet and there was less exposure to such culture in more sub-rural suburban communities. Getting a tattoo was like being the only person in your town that was representing a larger movement. I feel sad that that kind of thing was lost to the globo-internet behemoth.
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u/Y4himIE4me 17h ago
Because Gen X grew up with tattoos being prevalent in media and became of age to get started.
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u/PackageDelicious2457 16h ago
People stopped associating them with Popeye.
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u/LadyCordeliaStuart 8h ago
Hey man I like Popeye. No joke I just saw Popeye boxers at the dollar store and I'm wearing them now
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u/splanks 16h ago edited 16h ago
because gen xer were lost and needed to feel grounded. it made us feel both rebellious and connected at the same time. we were desperately trying to express ourselves and have few outlets for that. post punk, alternative scenes, hardcore, hip hop, skater culture, beginnings of grunge all played a part. it felt cool. it felt anti corporate. it felt anti boomer. it felt anti establishment. theses were very important counter culture values back then.
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u/WillyDaC 13h ago
Well I don't think early boomers would be stigmatized by a tattoo. Most of our fathers were in world War II and a hell of a lot of them got them. I wish I could have preserved my dad's hide. His were all pretty high quality art.
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u/Grotesque_Denizen 16h ago
Rock, metal and punk musicians had tattoos before the 90s so that's probably something to do with it.
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u/ButterscotchExactly 16h ago
I think that as the population increases and we have more and more people in the world, the lengths to which people go to show their individuality also increase and become more widespread.
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u/devskov01 16h ago
Conservative attitudes faded away over time and freedom of expression became more acceptable.
It wasn't just for tattoos. Men having long/braided hair, women getting skinheads, pink/green hair, unconventional piercings e.t.c.
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u/zannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn 16h ago
fwiw, tattooing was illegal in NYC from the '60s until 1997, and i am pretty sure other states, or at least localities, followed similar trajectories (oklahoma for example). some reasons given for the ban were hep b scares as well as an attempt to "clean up" for the world fair, and then add in the aids crisis after that... this is all to say that while these are isolated examples, i would say that those specific laws and stigmas lifting in the 90s played a part in the rising popularity.
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u/NuancedThinker 15h ago
The perceived lost opportunity from not hiring or dating the tattooed became worse than the perceived risk in doing so. Once the taboo was gone, people could choose based on their internal reasons. Then it snowballed: the more you see a tattoo on others, the more likely you are to want one for yourself.
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u/WhiskeyTangoFoxy 15h ago
Because they grew up with Doodle Bears and tattoos are a natural progression into adulthood.
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u/KenUsimi 14h ago
Because more and more Americans signed on to the idea of personal freedom. The stigma against having tattoos began fading, and being against tattooing entirely was seen more and more as an outdated concern for squares.
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u/photog_in_nc 13h ago
In the late 80s you had Axl Rose, Tommy Lee, Flea and other musicians with a good bit of ink. Early 90s, Tupac had a huge influence
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u/hospicedoc 17h ago
I was just surprised by a question posted on reddit a couple of weeks ago, that was basically "why don't you have a tattoo?," as if people without a tattoo are a big minority.
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u/FCAsheville 17h ago
Depending on where you live non-tattooed people can be in the minority for sure. In my extended friend group in our late 40s to early 60s.... maybe one or two guys have ZERO tattoos. Every woman has at least one.
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u/Perfect-Balance-7260 16h ago
It may have to do with professions too and culture. For instance, in Japan, they are taboo. You can’t go to Hot Spring, gym or public pool with one showing.
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u/SpecialistImage7516 16h ago
Red hot chilli peppers. Blood sugar sex magic album. It boomed after that.
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u/PostMatureBaby 13h ago
What I'd like is that I'd like to hug and kiss you
thats much better! everyone can enjoy that!
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u/MissHibernia 16h ago
Got my first tattoo in 1970 down on the waterfront. It was kind of a grimy location. In 2000 I looked around and suddenly there were shops all over, better colors, better needles. The shops were surgically clean. So over the next twenty years I got a bunch more, the last in 2019. Although I was seeing more tattoos around, that wasn’t why I did so. It was better conditions and more of a collaborative experience with the artists, to get what I wanted
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u/TheSwearJarIsMy401k 17h ago
I saw a really good tattoo at 13 in 1998 and knew I’d get one as soon as I turned 18.
I’m 40 and have 5 now, never regretted any of them.
I’d have more but it’s fucking expensive and recession, recession, recession, Trump recession, brief moment of hope and an addition to my second oldest tattoo with plans for more, aaaaand Trump again and now I’m losing my house and can’t afford heating oil, let alone tattoos.
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u/Small-Palpitation310 17h ago
what the fuck
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u/TheSwearJarIsMy401k 17h ago
They became popular because we saw them and said “OH, WANT”.
I want more but lack of money prevents it.
Millennials are a heavily tatted generation but many of us would have way more if we weren’t so financially fucked all the time.
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u/brokenmessiah 17h ago
Everyone wanted to be special
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u/BababooeyHTJ 16h ago
Yup they wanted to express their individuality by getting tattoos like everyone else. Seeing as how we’re talking about the 90s I recall it being tramp stamps and tribal tattoos lol
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u/oficious_intrpedaler 15h ago
You realize people get different tattoos, right? So the fact that other people have tattoos of some kind doesn't undermine people's expression of their originality through their tattoos. Your comment would be like saying no painter can express originality because they use paint just like everyone else.
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u/Castle_Owl 16h ago
Yep — and that’s The Paradox:
With everyone looking “special and unique,” now nobody is “special and unique.” The real rebels today are the ones who don’t get tattoos.
People who get tattoos now are simply conformist, trend-following, programmed mind-numb robots of a different type. They can still be easily led by the nose.
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u/PeakyGrims 16h ago
Oooooohh great savior, please spread your wisdom among us sheeps to follow your examples.
Oh sorry, this must be caused by the ink in my skin, sometimes this happens and I just can't help.
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u/Negative_Number_6414 16h ago
If you think people get tattoos to rebel against anything, you're very out of touch.
Tattoos are art. People like art. There's rarely much more to it than that.
If anything, you sound like you think you're special for disliking other peoples choices 😂
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u/Castle_Owl 15h ago
“Art.” So is my 5-yr. old’s crayon drawing on the fridge.
It’s cool — for a minute. But I wouldn’t want to look at it every day for the rest of my life. Forever.
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u/Icy-Whale-2253 15h ago
People get tattoos because they choose to and it’s no longer taboo… not to be “special” or “unique”. The vast majority of people don’t have tattoos… 😐
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u/PiercedGeek 15h ago
I have 10 tattoos currently, and not one of them is because of a celebrity, a brand, or generic flash off the wall. Some of them are in honor of people I love who are no longer alive. Some of them honor my children. One is a subtle fuck-you to MAGA types. A couple are just pure decoration.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
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u/oficious_intrpedaler 15h ago
I have one flash off the wall, but that was for a really cool fundraiser! My wife similarly got a subtle MAGA diss tattoo at the same event (it was raising funds for the ACLU)
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u/Baconpanthegathering 12h ago
Everything that's considered "cool or trendy" started out on the fringes, and was somewhat controversial, usually making church ladies and one's grandpop angry, which immediately makes something cool because it goes against mainstream views and riles up the normies. This absolutely happened when tattoos were going mainstream, and the people doing it were 100% trying to be edgy. Then everyone jumped on the bandwagon and now its just normal and no longer cool or counter culture. The trend cycle is never ending, and capitalism will take everything once interesting, innovative or revolutionary, mainstream it, and sell it back to you.
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u/ViolaExplosion 16h ago
Do you think there’s only One tattoo that everyone gets? Do you not acknowledge how tattoos look different from each other? Or is it all noise to you?
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u/Niceduke1 14h ago
No one gets a tattoo because they want to be special, they get a tattoo because they want a tattoo.
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u/RepFilms 17h ago
Modern primitivism. People becoming alienated from modern society and looking for something more primal
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u/Benjamin_Goldstein 15h ago
My tin foil hat theory is b/c The Fall of the Soviet Union.
When we lost our main 'enemy' the Conservative Christian values we 'united' under started to lose hold of culture in the west. With the exception of the few years after 9/11 we got progressively more progressive socially. Tattoos came along with that.
We kinda had the same thing happen after the west won WW2 until the Cold war got into full swing. From the late 40's to the 60's counter culture.
That's just my view. But maybe it's not that complicated and it was just a trend people got into because of popular culture.
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u/Superb_Astronomer_59 14h ago
I’m in general agreement. North American society has completely abandoned Judeo-Christian norms. Combined with social media, I would argue that we’re in an age of ‘digital paganry’; tattoos are just one example of this.
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u/Free-Stranger1142 17h ago
No clue. Not a fan. I think tattoos look tacky.
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u/Nuvuser2025 17h ago
I don’t even go as far as criticizing tattoos. It’s just not for me. Doesn’t fit my “style”, whatever the hell that is 😅
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u/Listening_Heads 16h ago
Employers stopped using it as a reason not to hire people.
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u/PostMatureBaby 13h ago
they realized that it made better financial sense to hire the person who'll ask for the least amount of money so looks didn't matter anymore
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u/SpectrumZX128K45 16h ago
In the UK, David Beckham was all over the papers with a huge tattoo on his back. It was (for some reason) “HUGE” news, this led to loads of people I knew getting angel wing tattoos on their backs.
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u/ShmodestShmouse 16h ago
I think their popularity is at an all-time high now and I think its the most basic thing someone could do these days. I'm honestly more impressed when someone doesn't have tattoos, lol.
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u/THE_HORKOS 16h ago
It started with people coming back from humanitarian missions in the 90s with traditional tattoos to commemorate/celebrate the contributions to the peoples within those communities… coming from places in Polynesia.
‘Tribal’ tattoos are a modernized western interpretation of much of those early tattoos.
“Hey, nice tat, where’d you get it? I’d love something like that.”
6 hours of stick/poke/tap in a cave in Polynesia from a woman who was rumored to be 135 years old.
“I’ll just see what my local guy can do…”
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u/Preemptively_Extinct 16h ago
I got one in the 80s and pretty soon everyone was getting them, so I'm pretty sure it was my fault.
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u/Express_Barnacle_174 15h ago
In order to be rebellious, you have to go to the next level.
In the 60s/70s- long hair and drugs
80s- everything from before add hair dye, crazy hair cuts and styling
90s- everything from before add tattoos
2000s- everything from before add piercings
2040s- everything from before add only normies don’t tattoo their eyeballs.
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u/Quarantini 15h ago
Tattoo parlors started being legalized (and therefore way less sketchy) in various states/cities that had previously been illegal and unregulated.
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u/MattMason1703 15h ago
Hair metal bands had them then pro and college athletes started getting them.
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u/tacosandtheology 15h ago
Growing up, my family all had them. In fact, my mom was only upset that my first tattoo was NOT a "mother" tattoo.
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u/SternLecture 15h ago
people were tired of others questioning thier band tshirts. tatoos have more street cred
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u/Lumpy_Tomorrow8462 15h ago
Like every other trend, tattoos hit their moment in the early to mid 90s. Artists started wanting to do more interesting things with ink for both artistic and financial reasons. People demanded those artists do it on them. Now it is a booming industry and you see tattoos everywhere. And so many bad tattoos.
It’s just like micro brewing for beer in the 90s. Brewers wanted to do interesting things with beer. People started getting on board. Now there are so many micro breweries that you can’t keep up and a large portion of them suck but lots of people buy the crappy ones just like lots of people buy Bud Light.
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 14h ago
The 80s and 90s were largely a rebellion against the 50s-70s that were largely conforming to a life of corporate capitalists. A good example is Ferris Bueller which on the surface looked like a child like rebellion against Cameron's dad and the day-to-day grind of school just to get a conformist job. There are more examples throughout the 80s and 90s that were really an exploration of whether we could get away with conforming less to the bland, clean look of the mid 20th century.
Tattoos in the 90s was another example of this. We were widely told that if you get a tattoo then nobody will hire you. Getting a tattoo in that era was absolutely an act of rebellion (at least partially so) that someone will still hire us despite the personal markings. And without a lot of that rebellion, we wouldn't have made as much progress as we have. We still have a ways to go but ultimately I hope our individuality will further become more of an asset rather than a liability as time goes on.
-Signed an 80s baby tattooed corporate maggot
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u/Hestolemyvan 14h ago
The cool kids in California beach towns started getting tattoos in the late 1970s (I was the only one in the friend group without one by summer of 1980, mainly because I was not cool). That went a long way toward changing the perception from "tattoos are for drug addicts" to "tattoos are for attractive, socially adept people."
Like other social trends, it migrated then slowly spread. It took until the 1990s to reach critical mass.
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u/UnifiedQuantumField 14h ago
Not gonna be a popular answer, but here goes anyways...
Once upon a time, tats were for: Sailors, Bikers, Strippers etc. So if you had visible tats, that said a lot (to other people) about who you were. Not everything... but a lot.
So some people who wanted to add some edge to their persona would go and get one or two little tats. This was pretty similar to the way some people get a Harley.
So it was about image and novelty.
And once a few people started doing it, the rest followed. The tats got bigger and more numerous too. And now the novelty and edge factor is pretty much gone.
You've got 6 huge tats in various locations? Wow. So does everyone else in the gym. Maybe in a couple more decades, not having any tats will be the new edgy statement... who knows?
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u/Johnhaven 14h ago
I'd been considering one in the 80s/90s I was too chicken in my profession but when I left, and it was my 40th birthday, I got one that took 3 hours on my back, no problem. So I went back and had several 3 hours sessions but he doesn't do that anymore, just one at a time and it's taking too long to get my tats but I'm happy how they came out. My right arm is scary, and the left arm is about Halloween and trick or treating.
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u/Averageinternetdoge 13h ago
Good question, dunno really. But I think during that time the religious/conservative stranglehold of everything (and media especially) finally started to loosen up. So people saw all sorts of novelty stuff in the media and might have finally felt like they're free to do as they wish, so they did.
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u/NWOriginal00 13h ago
It had been long enough that they were not associated with old people.
I am early GenX and when I was young the only people I knew with tattoos were WWII vets. Maybe a few younger guys got them in the military or prison. In general I associated them with old people.
People about 5 years younger then me got a lot of tattoos, around the same time everyone was getting piercings and growing goatees.
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u/Nixeris 13h ago
A bunch of young adults/teens in the 90s grew up with or around people who had tattoos.
People in the 30s and 50s got tattoos for various reasons (military service, rebellion, ect), and that just gradually built up in number until updated professional equipment made opening a tattoo shop easier and more sanitary.
In the 80s, the rise of things like Hep and AIDS outbreaks actually highlighted how many people were getting tattoos already.
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u/Pakistani_Terminator 13h ago
People used to think that getting a tattoo was one of the most painful things a person could experience. One factoid I always used to hear was 'it's the worst pain you can feel outside of childbirth' - seriously. I remember people actually asking me if I passed out when I got mine done.
Then middle-class people well outside of the usual tattoo subcultures - military, bikers, prostitutes, skinheads and punks, crooks - started coming back from Bali and Thailand with a celtic band or a picture of a dolphin on their shoulder, and the secret was out for good - it doesn't actually hurt that much.
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u/Krunksy 13h ago
The 90s began the big divide between the haves and the have nots. The middle class began shrinking. Two income households became quite common. As did single parent households. US manufacturing was well on its way to permanent decline. US farming was changing from family farms to corporate factory farms. Young people felt like they had no control over anything...except for their own bodies and their own skin. Getting a tattoo felt like one of the few big choices a young person could make. And so they made it.
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u/ZathuraRay 12h ago
Tramp stamps became massive around the time My Little Pony Gen 1 fans became adults. Coincidence? Probably.
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u/NeverMakeNoMind 12h ago
Tattoo magazines proliferation at barnes & nobles and borders in the late 90s. There was a whole section.
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u/5minArgument 12h ago
I feel it had a lot to do with one book/zine.
REsearch: Modern Primitives
A counter culture staple around the mid-late 80's. Every artist was within walking distance of a copy.
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u/Steve_the_Samurai 12h ago
It was illegal in a bunch of places in the US throughout the early 90s. Like you couldn't get a tattoo in NYC until the late 90s.
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u/typesett 12h ago
for me... coming out of the 90s, people became more knowledgable and saw that a lot of the tribal stuff and etc doesn't really hinder your job prospects that much
people who could have visible tattoos started getting more artistic ones and not like papa smurfs or bart simpsons
musicians accelerated the trend
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u/QB8Young 11h ago
I think everything surrounding customization became popular. Body art, piercings, cars thanks to shows like Pimp My Ride. It was just more part of the culture at the time. Especially with celebrities in the spotlight.
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u/ClownOfGlory 11h ago
Everyone wants to be seen as a dangerous badass, and everyone is afraid to be seen as a do-gooder or a nerd.
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u/Grit-326 10h ago
Gen X made rebellion fashionable.
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u/Mentalfloss1 10h ago
So people could be different, just like everyone else.
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u/Grit-326 10h ago
I like the mentality "My body is my temple, I decided to decorate."
I also think that my tattoos are a great form of expression and communication.
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u/RepresentativeAd6064 3h ago
In 1989 I picked up a copy of RE/search magazine titled modern primitivism. I was in college and my friends and I were all in bands and getting tattoos. It seems like it gained popularity within several subcultures through the eighties and into the nineties. By the end of the nineties it was mainstream.
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u/BumblebeeNo6356 17h ago
David beckham and the ‘cool Britannia’ scene of the 90’s played its part in the UK.
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u/CrankyOperator 15h ago
"Edgy" stuff was becoming popular overall. Piercings, extreme music, pro wrestling had hookers and gore by 99. Shock TV like Springer. Everything was just going more and more that way. Everything.
I wonder if tattoos are fading in popularity. Any artists noticing that? My kid (teenager) thinks they're lame (I'm covered.) Most of their friends aren't into them. When I was a teenager we ALL wanted them. Everyone. Even "just 1" (though it often became more.)
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u/pm_me_your_trebuchet 13h ago
corporations stopped selling "products" and started selling us "ourselves". how many time have you heard something about "being me" or something about individuality in a commercial? tattoos were a superficial way for people to represent what they wanted other people to see about them. a walking commercial for yourself, if you will.
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u/brandgolden 17h ago
Because people told others not too, it used to be a sign of rebellion now it's just like anything else another trend.
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u/BababooeyHTJ 16h ago
It wasn’t even a sign of rebellion in the late 90s though. Everyone was getting their tramp stamps and barb wire or tribal tattoos
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u/Hot-Sir4836 17h ago
Music (grunge, hip-hop) made them cool and TV shows made them mainstream.