A Brave Statement on Tattoos

The UK's Liz Jones makes a very brave point.

In an article blasting the fashion of tattooing, "Why DO women have these tramp stamps?, she writes:

They criss-cross the nation's women, rendering their victims permanently scarred. They peep out of shirt collars, above the waists of jeans or between the straps of a pair of sandals. They wink at you as someone passes the sugar across a table. They are a mark of temporary insanity, instantly turning the classiest, chicest woman into trailer trash. Not for nothing are they known as 'tramp stamps'...tattoos, the most tasteless, tacky, tawdry, terrible plague to infect our nation since mad cow disease.

...Helen Mirren, who has the Indian Lakesh symbol, meaning 'whole woman', inscribed just below the thumb on her left hand, she rolled her eyes. (Helen Mirren is, by the way, the only woman in her 60s I can think of who doesn't look ridiculous sporting a tattoo). She got hers when she was drunk one night on a theatre tour in Minnesota. 'It was years before tattoos became fashionable. I'm appalled they have become middle class,' she said. 'There is no respect for rebellion any more.'

And then, she zeros in:-

My best friend's grandmother has a tattoo, a series of numbers, on the inside of her wrist. Her tattoo, more of a brand, really, was once navy, but has faded with time. It is most definitely not a fashion statement. She was given the tattoo when she was a small child, upon entering a Nazi concentration camp. She is proud of her tattoo, an indelible reminder of mankind's inhumanity to man. Her disfigurement is a badge of courage, not a woolly-headed fashion statement.

My thought, too.