a closed-minded View

I flipped on the television this morning to find the ABC talk show, "The View." If you're not familiar with the show, it's basically 4 middle-aged women who discuss various issues from the news and their own lives. In any case, I was surprised to notice that the women were talking about tattoos. One co-host, Barbara Walters, seemed confused by tattooing, as much of her generation is. She recounted an experience not unlike one that I had with my mother in which she questioned why her daughter didn't remove her jacket on a particularly warm day. It was on this day she came to discover that her daughter had acquired a tattoo on her shoulder. Although confused, Walters didn't seem to have the same negative attitude toward tattooing that both Joy Behar and Star Jones did. Behar boldly claimed that "tattoos are a mistake" because we are constantly changing. Yes, Joy, it is a fact that people change, but not all tattoos are just a "cool design." Many represent meaningful experiences in one's life and will eternally serve as a reminder of such. Also, Behar only referred to her disdain for celebrity tattoos during the discussion. We all know that Angelina Jolie screwed up a bit in the tattooing department, but she screwed up in the marriage department too. Her biggest mistake of all was combining the two into a (semi-) permanent marking on her body. Tattoos aren't the problem here - bad tattoo choices are.
Star Jones, on the other hand, was more concerned with the deterioration of tattoos over time as a result of changes in body shape and size. I don't mean to be offensive, but considering that the only news headlines I have ever read about Star Jones concern her body size, it's fair to say that she would be preoccupied with such things. As for many of the rest of us, the art and the memory are what really matters. Anyway, I don't think America should be taking advice from a group of women who agreed that it's a great idea to "drink a lot before" getting inked. Come on now...