Tattoos as Cargo Cult Danger and Rebellion

The more people have them, the uglier they get

I think tattoos on women are very unattractive. Some other guys find this preference puzzling. I used to think that the only upper-class men who found them appealing were liberals who had convinced themselves that they should celebrate whatever non-traditional choices a woman makes. But recently I’ve met a few guys who are even more right-wing than I am who don’t mind girls with tattoos, and I decided that I should probably explain my strong aversion to them.

To me, the idea that tattoos are unattractive has always been so self-evident that it wasn’t worth exploring. To be a heterosexual man means you like the way women look. In that case, why would you want permanent markings on the face or body? In the simplest terms possible, why would you want something that gets in the way? I googled “hot tattooed woman,” and this was one of the first results I got.

You evolved to be attracted to a woman’s torso, legs, breasts, and so forth. You did not evolve to be turned on by drawings of flowers or text contorted into the shapes of these body parts. In the picture above, I don’t think it’s normal to find her left leg more attractive than the right. Maybe you can look past weird pictures or writing if the attraction to what is underneath is strong enough, but there’s no obvious reason why they should add to the experience. If nothing else, tattoos mean you get a worse look at the contours of a woman’s body. Sometimes it can be better to leave some things to the imagination, but this isn’t like clothes, where you can dream of eventually taking them off and getting to the real thing. Here, something that you would naturally find to be the most compelling thing in the universe has been deformed. How is this not a tragedy?

One could leave it at that, but there’s obviously more going on here. Put it like this: no one buys a sex doll with tattoos. Or at least I’ve never seen one. If men like them on humans, it must be because they signal something desirable about the woman.