I remember once back in high school, back in a time when body piercings were just starting to take off and were for the most part, still considered somewhat shocking, that there was a girl who sat a few desks away from me in biology class. One day our teacher noticed that this girl had a nose ring. He approached her and asked her numerous questions about it: what her parents thought, if it hurt, etc…and the girl answered the questions nervously, as though she were aware that the entire class knew that she was full of shit. At the time, I didn’t know that she was full of shit, but I quickly found out that the nose ring was little more than a fake – a magnetic stud that she could put in and remove at her leisure, all the while lapping up the stares and nods of approval at her “hardcore” appearance.
The stares and nods of approval didn’t last, though. They switched places with scoffs and the sort of ridicule that is reserved especially just for those deemed to be posers. I don’t know what happened to that girl after high school, but she did stop wearing the nose ring immediately after it became known that it was a fake, forever enduring the scorn of high school kids who smelled a rat.
And so it goes, that when you take the easy route with body piercing and tattooing, you play with fire. So it’s with this concept in mind that I wonder why anyone would purchase fake tattoo sleeves. I’m guessing that they have been around for a while, but this is the first that I have ever heard of them. After checking them out a bit, they range from truly horribly fake looking things that resemble a nylon inked with crappy graphics, to reasonably decent fakes that could fool someone into thinking that you had sleeve tattoos (provided that person were standing half a block away and was drunk/high).
My big question with these isn’t whether or not you can fool anyone with them, it’s why you would want to in the first place. Okay, a Halloween costume perhaps – fine. But something tells me that these aren’t sold so that people can dress up for Halloween. Something tells me that major retail shops like Hong Kong’s trendy G.O.D. sell these because people want to look “hardcore” without actually being “hardcore”. That to me is just sad, but hey, who am I to judge, right? If you’re excited about the prospect of making other people think that you have sleeve tattoos, then great. Just remember to keep in mind that while you’re wearing your brand new sleeve tattoos and strutting around looking for approving nods, no matter how long ago high school was, we can all still smell bullshit a mile away.