When the week begins with a Sadam Hussein finger mustache tattoo, it reminds you that, in this crazy, mixed-up world, you must be able to laugh at yourself, especially if you're tattooed. It wasn't always this way. There was a time when being heavily tattooed told the world that you could take alotta pain and equally dole it out; hence, body art barred you from being the butt of a joke. Now, more and more people are whining for numbing creams, leading to exchanges like the following found on Overheard in New York:

Having once been a neighbor of Andromeda, I can vouch for the veracity of the latter statement.

But the die-hard punk is a dying breed, and you know you’ll never strike fear in the hearts of neighbors again when The Onion mocks your tattoos regularly; this week, it skewered racist prison tattoos in between laughing at Mel Gibson.

When The Onion is not making fun of your tattoos, you can count on my buddy Tian from Hanzi Smatter to fill that void. Tian dedicates his free time to pointing out Hanzi and Kanji done wrong, basically letting you know that the characters you chose for “free spirit” mean “crazy diarrhea.” Last Thursday, Tian had comedian Carlos Mencia take over, posting a video clip of Mencia’s monologue on getting the right tattoo:

You’d think that would fill the quota for a week’s bod mod mockery, but the final nail in the coffin for the tattooed bad ass archetype came from none other than Mister Macho himself, Elton John. The aging queen of glam told Fashion Rocks magazine, “I'm so over the tattoos and the T-shirts and rings through the noses. It's not pretty, it's not pleasant, it's not exciting. Please stop it now." Because, ya know, men in gold spandex leggings and wigs are such a fashion Do these days.

Nevertheless, Elton’s verbal lashing helped me realized that, even with two full sleeves, a backpiece, and a bunch of other visible tattoos, I’m still as gangsta as Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. If I want to get any street cred back, I need to go “extreme.” At least that’s what I learned from the Associated Press article “Freaking Out The Mainstream,” which suggests that more invasive body modification procedures are becoming popular but still remain shocking.


AP Photo/Donna McWilliam

These procedures include tongue splitting, implants, scarification, branding, and ear sculpting. To learn more about these procedures, the AP spoke to respected body modification artist Allen Falkner of Obscurities. [No one has ever mocked Allen and lived to tell about it.] It also quoted the Association of Professional Piercers on why extreme procedures are gaining popularity:

Very true. Garcia’s statement can be backed up by myriad of comedic monologues on the belly ring alone; yet, tongue splitting is largely absent from the sets on Comedy Central. Perhaps it’s because conventional thought dictates that a person who takes a scalpel to their body is someone you shouldn’t fuck with. At least for now. The soon-to-be-hipster scalpel set have time to develop a sense of humor, that is, until self-amputees are all the rage.

Marisa_DiMattia is a lawyer and editor of Needled.com, a blog on tattoo art and culture, which includes profiles on tattoo artists, news, book reviews, event listings, and shopping guides.