Monday, June 15, 2009

That's Like So Pre-Recession!

Not so coincidentally with the stock market tanking afresh, comes news tattoo removal is booming, particularly among newly unemployed professionals. Many of them have divined to their sorrow what we of a certain age were taught by our parents years ago: many potential employers will not regard them seriously with their arms (and other body parts) engraved with gaudily colored "art." With the unemployment rate soaring, working-class chic is losing its appeal among the upper classes.

I was obliged to attend a wedding a few years back that took place in a closed and deconsecrated synagogue, fashionably delapitated, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The participants and a good percentage of the guests were what could be described as Williamsburg (Brooklyn) hipster elite. Tattoos were everywhere (on guys, too!). Even the priestess who married the couple (never once using the "G" word) sported a large and spiffily inked bouquet on one of her hefty deltoids. I remember wondering at the time: "How much longer can this go on?" Four years to the month, it turns out.

(h/t For What It's Worth.)

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