We’ve all seen a lot of different tattoo trends throughout the years. If I’m being frank (and I am), they all have a couple of things in common: they all suck and like all trends, they all eventually go the way of the dinosaur. I’ve written pretty extensively on this site about the mere concept of tattoo being seen as a trend and how that concept in itself has got it all wrong. A trend is something that is meant to be brief, something that rises and rises in popularity for a short period of time before ultimately disappearing. Can you therefore think of anything more directly at odds with tattoo than a trend? Nothing permanent should ever be considered a trend and I would be well wary of anyone who tries to convince you otherwise.
Despite this wariness of trends and their relation to tattoo, there is no shortage of people who are perfectly fine with trying to keep up with the impossible task of always staying on top of the latest big thing. The end result is that things go to rather stupid lengths to try and remain unique. The latest of these sorts of endeavours that I have seen comes from India. The city of Gurgaon is currently experiencing a rise in people wanting to get dental tattoos. What exactly is a dental tattoo? It’s pretty straightforward:
Now, I’m hopeful that I’m not alone in thinking that this looks like utter crap. I guess it would depend greatly on who the tattoo artist is that designs the tooth, because going by whoever designed the tooth in the above photo, I’m very far from being convinced that this is a good idea. I guess if it was done by the right people, it could potentially look quite interesting. And I also guess that the best thing about this concept is that it isn’t permanent and can be removed when the bearer gets tired of it. Still, regulating tattoo to a fashion accessory is not at all what tattoo is about. For some people however, this is exactly what tattoo is about. These are also the same people as 23-year old Lakshita who said that tattoos have started to “bore her”. Uh-oh! Sad trombone for you, Lakshita. I guess you’ll just have to keep chasing that elusive thrill of having something that no one else has – for this month, at least.
I’m sure that this will end up growing in popularity and with time and said popularity, it will likely become much more precise. At the very least, the ease of of trends such as this provides people who would otherwise hook themselves up with celtic or barbed wire armbands or ice cream cone neck tattoos with exactly what they crave: the ability to get bored and change things up. Lucky them.