To think there should be a higher minimum age for face tattoos

[salutsandy]

I think a face tattoo is such a huge decision that there should be a higher minimum age, say 25 or 30, for this. AIBU?

I’m not convinced that 25 is more of a magic age for obtaining responsibility and insight and experience than 18. You only have to read a few MN threads to realise that there are still many, many people out there much older than 25 with low insight, poor skills for assessment of risk, still making terrible decisions for their lives.

Just curious - if due to the way the brain develops nobody should make a significant decision before that point, would it impact and stunt the brain development itself? Perhaps the period between 18 and 25 is crucial and the way the brain achieves maturity? Personally I think it highly unlikely that any age is the magic point of adult responsibility appearing.

I suppose the opposite argument might be that those years of bad decision making might mean the opposite applies.

But everyone is a complex product of genetics and environment and experience. I know terribly mature people in their early twenties and some people of my more advanced age that make me wonder how the heck they've survived this long given their risky lifestyles.

I'm somewhere in the middle depending on situation and have learned all my life skills by trial and error.

But I say again, given the current state of the world if a handful - and it still is a handful - of people decide to get facial tattoos that they might regret later, it hardly merits legislation when a robust 18 and above system already exists and is taken seriously by professionals in the field.

You honestly don’t or you like to pretend you are so cool you just say can’t comprehend why no one wants an accountant with LUDACRIS tattooed above their left eyebrow. I am a lawyer and I have a tattoo, somewhere clients and colleagues cannot see on a day to day basis. It would not be acceptable in any firm I have worked in for people to have visible tattoos. It’s unprofessional looking. Face and neck tattoos in particular should be discouraged as I have never seen a nice one and they ruin, completely ruin people’s looks. I don’t agree with raising the age to get one but maybe say anything above the neck you have to see a psychiatrist first lol if you are insane no tattoo above the neck. The popularity will plummet!

Face tattoos should be illegal because some can't see the benefit from them?

What about ear piercing, no benefit to that either, or cosmetic surgery, I can't see a benefit there, or any one of a million other personal decisions.

Interesting that many think they should be banned at 18 as well because they are life long and could impact your career, babies are also life long and can impact your career and you may regret having one further down the road, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a thread on here advocating for an age limit of 25 for having a baby.

There is still so much judgement in society towards heavily tattooed people, and I truly don't get it, it's just art.

Yeah I probably should have arranged the sentence a bit better. The point is that there are alot of threads where half the posts are diagnosing people with all sorts , because on MN no one can ever be an idiot or an arsehole or do something really stupid. There's always a medical reason. Narcissistic personality disorder comes up alot too.

I'm not saying these things don't exist im just saying that we can't legislate for every possibility behind a silly decision. People have friends and family for that. If family have concerns about a person's mental capacity etc they need to put things in place where possible. Contact whoever they need to contact. Becuase otherwise people of legal adult status will walk into an establishment with valid ID and give valid consent for a perfectly legal procedure regardless of how others feel about it.

I actually thought they were illegal until they started becoming more commonplace. That's another bloody daft thing my mother told me when I was a child and that I carried on believing well into adulthood.

I hate facial tattoos and, while I would like to see them banned, I realise that if people want to have them, it's their face, their choice.

@FlightyFoxing

I'd be curious to know what age you think is reasonable to be legal for face tattoos?

I believe in bodily autonomy. Tattoos, piercings, haircuts, abortions, the lot.

You might not understand why someone wants one of the above, but you don't have to. It's not your body. That's how it works.

No none is improved by a face tattoo. They look horrible.

What's happened to "my body, my choice"?

@Eyerollcentral

Look, I was with my late DP, a body piercer of 30 years career, and it runs alongside tattooists. In the years we were together I saw and heard every possible argument, ethical and moral, got to know the legalities of it all, so maybe I am pretending to be cool 🙄

Actually no, I'm giving my opinion based on experience. Remember opinions are like arseholes.

But I still stand by my point that if someone wants a badly done tattoo on their face and then regret it, it's a lesson and they can deal with it. Especially if they're desperate to be an accountant.

Legislating for such a minority issue is a huge waste of resources. Like all fashions it will ebb and flow. Personal choice and responsibility for those choices should not be over ridden by the state if the activity in question is harming no-one else, and is not already illegal.

My DB paid a small fortune to have a couple removed. He's been left with a really weird patch where one of them was, it looks red in places but with really light patches in other bits. When I first saw it, I thought it looked like a burn scar or something.

Thankfully, it's not on his face.

I believe in bodily autonomy. Tattoos, piercings, haircuts, abortions, the lot.
You might not understand why someone wants one of the above, but you don't have to. It's not your body. That's how it works.

Your comment suggests I might not understand why someone wants any of these based on nothing. Quite a bizarre response to the question. I take it you'd be happy then if your dcs chose to get face tattoos at 18.

@MamaCanYouBuyMeABanana

well, you can't really get a babysitter for your face tattoo when you go to work can you?

I really like the facial ones Māori people get, (and possibly other Polynesian people but not sure). But i don't like any other face tattoos at all. So while i agree the age should be raised i think cultural tattoos are different. But where do you draw the line. Though i guess there aren't too many New Zealanders with full Moko walking around the UK.

I used to know a Maori guy in the UK with facial tattoos. Hopefully anyone with an inch of cultural awareness or even curiosity would not be biased against him in things like job interviews, because it's fairly obvious from how they look that it's not the typical facial tattoo.

No, tattoos are pretty portable, can go with you to work, and don't take much looking after either.

Let's not pretend a tattoo impacts your life/career more than a child does.

Yet people want face tattoos available to over 25s only, or be made illegal. The fact that other, bigger, life choices are deemed absolutely fine before 25 just proves its some sort of weird snobbery about tattoos rather than concern or whatever else its being dressed up as.

I especially dislike seeing non-Maori people with Maori type tattoos. It smacks of cultural appropriation imo, along with dreadlocks on white people.

I don't swallow that "brain doesn’t mature until 25" stuff. My peers and i were all working full-time and living away from our parents at 18. We were adults in an adult world, not immature children unable to make responsible decisions.

It's correlated with psychopathy so it's a pretty good red flag.

Joking aside, any decent tattoo artist won't do them unless the person is pretty committed with a LOT of other tattoos over time.

This. They really are hideous

Based on your (and a lot of other posters) comments. Whenever tattoos etc are mentioned on MN it becomes a thread of people saying unpleasant things about other people's bodies and the choices they make with them.

My children have been raised surrounded by lots of different types of people, and for this context, both completely non-tattooed and extremely heavily tattooed people. It's normalised, there is not curious excitement about them, they are day to day sights and they've expressed absolutely zero interest in rushing out to get anything tattooed at 18, let alone their face.

Your comments are strange and arguably a bit inflammatory, very very few people at 18 have facial tattoos and those that do, an even smaller percentage (microscopic, I'll put money on it) would have had them done by anyone reputable.

Generally speaking, any tattoo artist worth anything won't tattoo hands/faces/necks etc of people who are young and not already heavily tattooed.

The age raising limit question is a laughable one. You can enlist in the army and become front line canon fodder, but you couldn't legally have a facial tattoo. What fantastic priorities.

I disagree ,obviously I think they look ridiculous and can't imagine why anyone would want one ,but we either accept that people are adults at 18 and able to make adult decisions or w e dont.

You can cut your own limbs off if you want. Doesn't make it a sensible suggestion or mean you won't be seen or treated differently. Most likely sectioned for a very long time.

Shouldn't then all people be under parents responsibility and supervision until 25 and have the age of consent moved up with jt?

I wouldn't have face tattoo but frankly, if the argument is that people are not developed enough to make that decision, then they are not developed for even bigger decisions like marriage, living by themselves, children...