HW 32 Tattoos & The Presentation of the Self

Tattoos are all instances of cool some people simply chose to resist from this so called trend and some chose to embrace it deeply through out their lives. To me tattoo's signify many different meanings like love, pride, being religious, reckless or even just trying to be a bas ass. I personally have many friends that have tattoos, one of them was trying to get closer to his religious roots in his family and got his name, (Bilal) tattooed on his arm in arabic. He I feel in fact was doing it for the sole purpose of trying to be different from everybody else, trying to basically be "cool".

 In some situations he benefitted from having the writing on his skin like when I was at a party with an few of my friends and him ask he was talking to some girls he was trying to get with he was succeeding in doing getting their numbers because he seemed interesting to the girls. One big sign I'm sure of them thinking he was interesting enough to hook up with on a prior ocassion was his tattoo. Now another situation he went through that didn't turn out so well was a job interview that he went to to work  a public libary. When he went to the interview he covered up the tattoo with a jacket and a sweatshirt but as the interview progressed to to words the end of the interview he was asked if he had any tattoos or body piercings. So they told him to show his forearms and shoulders because they would be pretty much the only visible part of his body that would be exposed to customer so he didn't get the job. Now I'm one hundred percent sure that he didn't get the job because of him having the tattoo because why else would he not get it he's a smart kid. Because of him getting his tattoo there was both a positive and negative effect that his tattoo had on people in different atmospheres , he seemed to achieve what he wanted in his social aspects but not the professional aspects of his life.

So i guess is Bilal's mind he thought that it was cool to get in touch with this religious roots by getting a tattoo but I think that he really didn't think about it before he got it. Before he got it he was telling me that he was planning on getting one and the day before he got it I was trying to tell him to think about it for another day and not to get it on your fore arm but he didn't listen to me. Not yet I bet he regrets getting it but as he gets older I'm sure he will think back and see just how uncool and stupid it was to a tattoo on your forearm for the world to see. After witnessing and hearing about him going through those positive and negative situations I personally learned from his actions enough to at least get a tattoo somewhere else where people can't see it. Right now in my life I'm not sure if I would even want to get a tattoo of my owe because my definition of tattoo's being "cool" is not yet clear to me. Maybe one day I will get one maybe I won't, only time will tell and change my perception of cool in the future.