I’ve received a short but fairly angry contribution from a reader, whom I’ll not name as I expect that there may be responses with equally angry vigour.
Around the SL grid there’s a lot of women wearing tattoos. The SL blogosphere is full of models sporting them. Real life is now that even nerdy, staid, middle class girls will have a couple of tattoos. Our contributor has the following to say about real life tattoos.
There is not one person on the face of the planet who looks ‘better’ for having a tattoo. A lot of pretty girls are, from a personal perspective, ruined with the application of a tattoo. They -the tattoos- look cheap & tacky, the girl herself made to look cheap and skanky.
When the trend for tattoos began, it was only women of a certain class that wore them. They weren’t called ‘the tramp stamp‘ for nothing.
Blokes look stupid wearing tattoos. Women look stupid and cheap. I hope the fashion for tattoos goes out of style soon. There’s a whole generation out there who are going to regret their f****** stupid decisions in later life.
Short and to the point. So what’s your take on tattoos? Like them? Loathe them? Have them? Wouldn’t dream of one? Classy? Tacky?
And if you’re an SL avatar, does your approach to tattoos follow RL? Or do you have a whole different attitude to SL tattoos (love them) as you would to RL tattoos (loathe them)?
Let me know.
Ella
the sl naturist 
It’s nobodies business but my own. People without tattoos are too often stereotyped but if a person choose to express themselves using body art that’s there choice.
Those are some pretty broad and sweeping comments to make about tattoos. It’s the kind of comment naturists might hear from people who can’t understand why anyone would walk around nude. It’s your skin, your choice. Wear your birthday suit as you see fit.
I agree with both of you. It’s not, and never will be, for me but that doesn’t give me or anyone else the right to pass judgement on others.
But perhaps I should have checked my messages more thoroughly prior to working his(?) message into a post 😦
And fixing the spelling and grammar, I should add.
Looking through my messages further it appears the same commenter has some ‘radical’ things to say about genital piercings, older/plus sized naturists and SLN’s failure to represent black, Asian and gay naturists. It’s only now, reading them all as a body of work, that I realise that these ‘contributions’ appear to be nothing more than trolling.
I was going to remove the post, but I’ll leave it on the blog in case others might like to comment on some people’s intolerances, and what we can learn from that (me especially, as trolling was so far off my radar that I didn’t even notice it when it arrived).
Ella
OK, I know I’m a dummy but can you please tell me the translation of “sl” and “rl”
SL = Second Life.
RL = real life.
This reminds me of tirades about pubic hair. Like, seriously? Why should I have a say about someone else’s pubic hair? I don’t have to deal with it. It’s their choice. My state of hair or hairlessness is my choice.
I don’t have tattoos, although I’m quite fond of the natural tats that are my stretch marks and what not, which decorate my body nicely 🙂 ❤ Anyway. I don't really care what someone else does with tattoos. I see a lot of them at the yoga studio I frequent, on all genders. I don't think anything about a person's class or whatever when I see. I'm just like, "Oh, there are colors on their skin. OK." Sometimes I take advantage of it in class, if someone practicing right in front of me has one on their neck, and use it as a place to set my gaze since it's wildly hard for me to keep my eyes still sometimes.
And one more thing:
I’m blessed to have met some amazingly welcoming people in my clothes free journey. Having established great contacts and amazing connection, I have been exposed to generous spirits these 8 months.
But honestly, if I had met that kind of radical attitude in the very infancy of my clothes free journey, I would have called “sincere” and “lifestyle” naturists a bunch of liars and frauds. Because I see a lot of posts on blogs and Twitter, etc. about how naturism is for every body, everyone, how it doesn’t discriminate, how people are accepting and don’t care what one looks like… it sounds all pie in the sky. But, for me, that kind of radical attitude negates all that. It returns to an obsession about appearance, about needing to see the body a certain way, creating class all over again …those tatted and not… and so forth in the other areas of argument… those with pubic hair or not, those with piercings or not… And it’s like, what’s to make me think, then, that my hair and skin would be off the table then? My stretch marks? My squishy bits? Aren’t they all on the table, then, for judgment and ridicule? Then I would think naturists were no different from the textile folks… everyone obsessed with the body and with image, one with cotton, one without.
Yes. It’s one of those arguments that comes around with deadly regularity. You can be sure that tatts, piercings and pubes are argued out on various naturist forums once a year.
Believe it or not when I first started reading naturist mags 20 years ago, in the pre-internet era, I used to read about circumcision as a naturist ‘issue’, tied into the same tired old ‘does size matter’ arguments, with males fretting not just about size, but penile profile. I’ve not seen that argument played out on forums in recent years, so I presume that ‘issue’ is now dead, thanks to the ready availability of naturist pix on the internet, and the fact that everyone in north America is now familiar with an uncut penis, and everyone in Europe familiar with a cut one. (Yep, I know it’s a very wild generalisation, but my memories of the debates are that they were cast in terms of wild generalisations all round, i.e…’will I, a circumcised male, be looked at strangely at a naturist club in (say) France where almost no one is circumcised’).
The answer then? No one cares. The answer to the tatts debate now? No one cares.
I could go into a long rant here about Britain’s class system, and how even matters of personal body adornment will be shoehorned into a ‘class’ issue, but we’ll leave that for another day. 🙂 I DO blame elements of right wing British media for reinforcing these ‘we belong, you don’t’ attitudes which sadly extend to all aspects of British life, naturism included.
I can only hope that we are reaching the end of the debates where people attempt to impose personal preference for body hair, tattoos or piercings on others.
hontouniheart – As you’ve figured out by now, those intolerant individuals are just that: individuals. They may mouth the ideals of social nudism but retain their Textile and personal prejudices. They are also the folks that you’re least likely to encounter at a nudist/naturist venue since they’d be terribly disappointed to find that no one agrees with them!
No one knows what’s in another’s mind unless that person expresses it in some way. Out of millions of nudists worldwide it’s inevitable that many harbor un-naturist ideas about their fellows, but even that minority knows to keep their thoughts to themselves and behave properly when amongst the community. Behavior defines any society and a society cannot be judged by the actions (or beliefs) of individuals.
The internet frees some of the most vocal of those malcontents to express their distorted version of nudist/naturist values freely without having to look anyone in the face. Their opinions are their own and of little consequence.
As a whole, our community believes in and strives to attain the high standards we hold ourselves to. Sometimes we fail. As human beings we are imperfect; as a worldwide community of disparate individuals we have achieved a level of tolerance and acceptance unrivaled in history. If only the Textile world should be half as successful!
‘The internet frees some of the most vocal of those malcontents to express their distorted version of nudist/naturist values freely without having to look anyone in the face. Their opinions are their own and of little consequence.’
Well said. I can only repeat that I didn’t pick up on this ‘trolling’ quicker, and I apologise to everyone for that.
I have many thoughts about tattoos and they have changed over the years. I think tattoos should be discouraged especially for the young because unlike most fashion trends, tattoos are hard to get rid of. We change throughout our lives and our ability to do that is celebrated. Tattoos cannot change with us quite so readily. At least in the textile community, they can be covered up and only seen by our intimates. Tattoos acquired during our experimental youth may not reflect who we are today. It could become so uncomfortable as to discourage the practice of public nudity. Hardly a positive element in our encouragement of naturism.
In the UK you have to be 18 before getting a tattoo, so the impetuous nature of youth probably can’t be factored in. If you’re considered to be mature enough enough to vote, get married, have sex or fight in a war, then you’re probably going to be considered mature enough to get a tattoo.
Of course, matching tattoos of ‘Tom loves Jill 4 ever’ might seem like a great idea on your 18th birthday, not so smart at 18 & 1/4, when Tom or Jill has left you ‘4 ever’.
I’m just old enough to be part of a generation that didn’t get tattooed as a rite of passage (even though many of my generation subsequently got tattoos) but I often wonder if I’d have succumbed to peer pressure had all my friends been getting them done as well. Probably not, following my one and only experience of a boy adornment needle for ear piercings that became infected and ensured I never even repeated that experiment of youth.
Ella
No apologies necessary. This stimulated a good discussion, and may have addressed some issues that other newbies are encountering right now!
This isn’t meant as a self-promotion, but we created All-Nudist years ago specifically to counter the plentitude of false ‘nudist/naturist’ websites out there. The bad information vastly outweighs the good stuff online, but sites like yours, ours, and others are doing the best we can we give folks an honest perspective on something most people totally misunderstand.
All-Nudist is a great repository of naturist related information. Sometimes it feels that you and I (where I touch on RL naturist stuff) are fighting an uphill battle against bad information. I know that within Second Life I’m fire fighting against what are sex sims promoting themselves as ‘naturist’. I hate that, because it might reinforce, for those unfamiliar with naturism, the idea that nudists=sex. And as soon as I’ve hosed down one sim, another one pops up 🙂 I’m sure you have the same issues with real life sites that promote themselves as ‘naturist’ but then (tumblr is awful for this) show graphic sex photos which, equally, damages the idea of naturism as wholesome and family orientated or, just as bad, contains photographs that creates the impression there is only one sex on the face of the earth….females.
Thanks, Editorial Team, for the compliment! We agree, of course 😉 and appreciate what you’re doing here. It’s an uphill battle (Tumblr – ugh!) but somebody’s gotta do it! If either of us was into AL, we’d be right in there with you!
As an aside, right now we’re kind of debating a Twitter follower who read this article via our tweet and has taken the position that your article basically agrees with the commenter, and he doesn’t like either! Did we misread you? It seemed like a simple, “What do YOU think?” article coupled with an obvious distaste for the comment itself.
Not sure if this will work, but here’s his latest reply:
I don’t do Twitter, FB or anything else like that, so I won’t be getting into the debate. SLN pretty much accounts for my indoor, computer related ‘down time’, and I’m not about to spread it any thinner than it already is.
I wouldn’t have a tattoo done. Not because they’re ‘cheap’, ‘tacky’ or anything else (although some probably do fit that category) but because I’m not about to have a needle near me that isn’t held by someone qualified in medicine. I have to look away if I’m subjected to a blood test 🙂 so the idea of an hour of that…not for me. So tattoos would disagree with me. That’s not the case for everyone, quite obviously.
I repeat, had I picked up on the ‘trolling’ element of the message received it wouldn’t have been published, but the views expressed indicate that there are those who agree with the contributor and those who disagree. Such is the nature of life.
If Kenny Riot wants to think my refusal to ever have a tattoo done means I agree that they’re ‘cheap or ‘tacky’ or whatever else he(?) said in the original post, that’s Kenny Riot’s prerogative. If I were to come out and say they were cheap and tacky, it would still a valid point of view clearly held by some of the respondents. But hardly something, either way, to get into some sort of lather over. Your body, your choice. My body, my choice not to have needles stuck in it for tattoos or piercings (including earlobes, incidentally).
Ella
But I should add, Kenny’s probably right. The comment basically was the article. I posted without expressing an opinion, on the basis that the original trolling(?) comment was ‘a view’. My views are immaterial. I’m just here to post on SL related naturist activity, which often (as with anything in SL) reflects the fashion trends in vogue.
Some people like tattoos. Some people hate them. Big deal.
There’s more important stuff to fret about other than ink.
I am not into tattoos, piercings, etc, but the most beautiful tattoo I have ever seen is on my baby-girl’s upper back. Miriam, who is now 25, was just 8 when her mother committed suicide, and she and her oldest sister were the ones who found their mother dead on the floor in our home. Her tattoo is a beautiful tribute to her mother, her Angel. Her mother, my wife, will always be remembered for the beautiful person she was, and her tattoo is a fitting tribute.
Yes, seems tats are now the fashionable rite of passage. Skin grafitti makes you a part of the herd. There’s nothing individual about getting grafittied, more than say a mole or scar. True individuality lies between the ears, and to scream “look at me” with ink is no different than writing on walls.