It never ceases to amaze me how utterly and down right imbecilic people can be with regards to their prejudices against tattoos. As common place as tattoos currently are, rigid opposition to the artform still exists. The only difference is that now the excuses to ban or divert the sight of tattoos from the general public are highly transparent and weak. Which makes for an interesting challenge for all the dinosaurs out there who still insist on equating tattoos with some sort of lower level of society: either start coming up with better excuses for excluding tattoos or realize that tattoo popularity is on the rise and will only continue to rise as the years go by.
Sports Illustrated is one such example of a refusal to either strengthen their excuses or accept the current popularity of tattoos. In their February swimsuit issue, race driver Danica Patrick had the tattoo on her lower back airbrushed out because Sports Illustrated says it promotes “natural beauty”.
That’s just weak.
Any publication that regularly showcases photos of bikini clad, sillicone injected, no-thanks-I’ll-just-have-a-cracker-instead-of-an-actual-meal models doesn’t give a single solitary crap about “natural beauty”. Whatsmore, even if Sports Illustrated was fully concerned about natural beauty, how does having a tattoo compromise a person’s natural appearance? Is Sports Illustrated somehow trying to suggest that tattooed women can’t be or aren’t beautiful? There’s nothing natural about any of the photos that Sports Illustrated takes of women in their swimsuit issues, so let’s not kid ourselves about that. What I think is that Sports Illustrated has a problem with tattoos – a problem that has nothing to do with promoting any sort of pure aesthetic. Sports Illustrated is stuck wallowing in tired old cliches about tattoos and neglecting to confess their true motives behind their actions in the process.
Seriously, it wouldn’t be half as insulting if they had just come forward and said “We don’t want tattoos in our swimsuit issues”. Many people wouldn’t have agreed with the policy, but at least their honesty could have been somewhat respectable. Instead, they took the chickenshit transparent lie route and that makes Sports Illustrated look weak and outdated.
Not to mention totally ignorant and more than a little sexist.