My mother's opinion on tattoos.

A funny thing about tattoos: When I was young, a tattoo really marked you as an outsider -- a biker, a sailor, or an adventurer. Most women who had tattoos had a small bird or butterfly or flower which they took care to conceal if looking for work or meeting new people. But now, a tattoo, or more precisely, a lot of well-done tattoos mark you as an insider. You are, as a young, hip person MORE likely to get a job if you have good ink. If you don't sport much ink, the assumption is that you're poor or just not cool. And good ink, make no mistake, is expensive (and understandably so, good artists take time and cost money) and now is a social status marker.