NEW YORK, Feb 21 — With tattoos now commonplace, regrets are by no means unusual. In the United States, as in Europe, tattoo removal is enjoying growing success, driven by as much by celebrities as by normal people who’ve had a change of heart about their body art. More broadly, this societal trend questions our relationship with the body.
At the age of 31, Pete Davidson had had enough — enough of the countless tattoos covering his body. For years, the American comedian sported designs of all shapes and sizes on his torso and arms, including Winnie the Pooh, a shark and a portrait of the late US Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
But all that is now a thing of the past. Since 2020, Pete Davidson has been undergoing a long and costly process of tattoo removal. According to People magazine, he has spent no less than US$200,000 to remove all the inked illustrations that once adorned his skin, which he now sees as youthful mistakes. “I got sober, and I saw myself in the mirror and I was like, ‘Nah. Who’s that?’ I was like, ‘I got to change it up a little bit,” he said in January on NBC’s “Today” morning show.
A few years ago, on the set of “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” the actor confided that his foray into cinema weighed in the decision to erase his tattoos. “I honestly never thought that I would get an opportunity to act and I love it a lot. It takes like three hours — you have to get there like three hours earlier — to cover all your tattoos,” he explained.
Like Pete Davidson, many people regret having etched on their skin the name of a loved one or a symbol whose significance has faded with time. While some manage to live with these once-meaningful motifs, others find them awkward and even undesirable, when undressing or interviewing for a job, for example. This is when tattoo regret sets in.
No easy process
Social networks are full of testimonials from people who regret the tattoos they’ve had for reasons that are, more often than not, purely aesthetic. “I regret all of my arm tattoos, every single one. So just a heads-up, if anyone is thinking about getting tattoos or at least as many as I have, be sure. Be ultra sure. I got them because I’ve never liked the way I looked, and I thought it made me look better and feel better, but three years down the line, I just wish I had my normal skin back,” explains TikTok user rhyzen_tt. His video, viewed more than three million times on the platform, has garnered many sympathetic comments from internet users who are also suffering from the tattoo blues.
While some people learn to live with the traces of their impulsive past, others choose to go under the knife — or rather, under the laser — to remove them. In recent years, a number of clinics have specialised in tattoo removal, mostly using picosecond lasers, which are reputed to leave no scars. The tool’s light beam generates a shock wave in the epidermis, fragmenting the tattoo pigments. These micro-particles of ink are then captured by the lymphatic system and, in theory, eliminated through the patient’s urine.
However, tattoo removal is said to be particularly painful, sometimes even more so than the tattoo itself, according to some testimonials. In addition to the pain, the cost is high. In the United States, laser tattoo removal costs an average of US$463, according to figures from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery cited in a June 2022 study by Strategic Market Research. Rates vary, however, according to the size of the design and the number of sessions required to completely erase it.
Falling out of fashion?
Although it’s no easy process, tattoo removal is attracting more and more customers. This trend is easy to explain: as the number of people getting tattoos rises, so does the number of people having second thoughts. In Italy, some estimates suggest that almost 48 per cent of the population has a tattoo, while in Australia the figure is as high as 20 per cent, according to The Guardian. Faced with this growing demand, clinics specializing in tattoo removal are seeing their business boom. The market is expanding so rapidly that it could reach US$12.15 billion by 2030.
After a meteoric rise, the craze for tattoos now seems to be slowing. In fact, some detractors are quick to dismiss tattoos as outdated. With so many bodies covered in ink, it’s now virgin skin that stands out. Not being tattooed has almost become more subversive than the opposite. This inversion of codes inevitably benefits tattoo removal, which plays a part in this shifting dynamic. Once a symbol of rebellion, belonging or self-affirmation, tattoos are gradually being removed or eschewed, which in turn becomes an act of protest.
Paradoxically, this phenomenon is paving the way for a new “skin reset” industry. Tattoo removal is no longer limited to a corrective approach, but has become a way of adapting to the trends of the moment. Like clothes or hairstyling, getting virgin skin is now a fully-fledged aesthetic choice. Some professionals even anticipate the rise of “long-lasting temporary tattoos,” offering an intermediate solution between commitment and flexibility.
So are tattoos really in decline, or simply undergoing a radical transformation? Rather than a total break with body art, tattoo removal could be viewed as a pause, paving the way for a new approach to tattooing that’s more modular, more reversible, but no less meaningful. — ETX Studio
