Have you heard about this thing where 44 people got some “superbug” infection from illegal tattooing? Youch!
The first thing this made me think of was that I’m glad I didn’t just get a tattoo from some guy in jail with a rusty guitar string and aged pen ink.
The second thing that ran through my head was that my parents have made “no tattoos” pretty clear, but I can get as many piercings as I like! (Which I did when I was 14 and am now stuck with a cornucopia of sad, empty holes in my ears.)
But then, my mind went to the whole Jews shouldn’t have tattoos thing. I wonder just how many of the people who got the superbug were Jewish? Hard to say, and fairly irrelevant. Ohio, Kentucky, and Vermont have high Jewish populations anyways, right? (Speaking of, this movie on Jews and tattoos looks really interesting.)
I’ve always been fascinated by tattoos, and it looks like our culture is too. Angelina Jolie references her tatt to encourage human rights, it makes international news, and heck! I was even supposed to be a henna tattoo artist this summer until… well… I always knew that job was too good to be true.
I myself love getting henna tattoos at street fairs in the summer, and looking at it every five minutes to make sure it’s still there and still pretty. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t put two quarters into every temporary tattoo-dispensing machine I walked past at the grocery store. We are a race of adornment; tattoos, earrings, cute graphic tees. Tattooing is increasingly becoming less taboo in the Jewish community, but either way, I’d do it safely and avoid the superbug…
And Superman Returns too–I hear it’s pretty bad. I’m kidding!
