istolethetv, Flickr
No, not Tijuana. Although you really shouldn’t get a tattoo there either. It’s amazing to think that just a few generations ago the only people who got tattoos were sailors, scumbags and prostitutes. Now everybody and their brother has a little ink on them somewhere. With that increasing social acceptance comes some problems, though: bad tattoo placement. Let’s look at seven spots on your body that you really shouldn’t get tattoos.
7 Lower Back
Real Men Have Spoken
Commonly known as the “tramp stamp,” the lower back tattoo is a staple of girls who make poor decisions. But it sort of makes sense on women – coupled with low-rise jeans, they draw the eye towards the buttocks, a powerful secondary sexual characteristic. That doesn’t make them classy, though. Even worse is the bizarre decision of men to get themselves tramp stamped – if you’re using a tattoo to draw attention to your asscrack, you’re doing things wrong.
6 Face
Utah Department Of Corrections
Okay, some real talk here: no matter how fast society’s mores evolve, if you get a tattoo on your face you will never get a job that will earn you any money. Straight up, kids – going for that Gucci ice cream on your cheek means a future lifetime of swabbing out toilets at Arby’s. Face tattoos have been gaining popularity in hip-hop culture thanks to artists like Lil Wayne, but for every Weezy there’s a thousand wannabees with a face full of ink. Keep your face clean.
5 Obliques
Tumblr
Oblique tats were first popularized by Angelina Jolie, who used the side of her torso to display the latitude and longitudes where her children were born. But this is one of the flat-out worst locations for a guy to get inked. Unlike women, who typically retain a fairly similar lower torso through life, the stomach region is one of the first areas where fat is deposited. Miss a few weeks with your trainer, eat too many cronuts and all of a sudden your ink is stretching and the words on your obliques look like some idiot messed with them in PowerPoint.
4 Ankle
Tattoo Design Gallery
Listen: if you’re going to get a tattoo, get a tattoo. Commit to it. Don’t get some diddly little thing that nobody will ever see. The ankle is probably the #1 cop-out location for guys to get tattooed on. It’s the place you get a Grateful Dead bear to honor a dead frat brother or something. A real man wears shoes basically all the time, because male feet are ugly and nobody wants to look at them.
3 Hip
Love To Get Inked
Here’s another spot that previously had been the exclusive domain of the fairer sex, but as metrosexuals look for a spot to get tattooed that won’t blow their cover at the investment bank, more and more men are getting piddly little hip tattoos. Straight up: these are terrible. One of the main jobs of a tattoo is to draw attention to a body part – that’s why the upper arm will always be prime real estate. Catch the eye, flex the bicep, close the deal. What are you going to wear to show off your hip tattoo, a tube top? Also, you know who has a hip tat? Justin Bieber. Case closed.
2 Inside Lip
Kitty Hell
One of the latest trendy tattoo locations has been the inside of the lip, with both men and women getting ink there. Since it can’t be easily seen, it doesn’t have the stigma that other face tattoos do. Unfortunately, the inner lip is a flat-out awful place to get a tattoo. The loose tissue there makes it easy for the ink to bleed, run and fade, and in many cases after a year all that’s left is an unreadable blotch. If you want to look like you’re addicted to sucking on Bic pens, go for it.
1 Penis
Vorstad Prinzessin
No. If you think of yourself as the kind of free-wheeling, danger-laughing tough guy who is fine with getting a tiny needle poked into his junk over and over, that’s cool, but consider this: the kind of women who would be OK with getting banged by a guy with a tattooed penis are the kind of women who you wouldn’t want to go near without at least 3 condoms on, and then she’d never see the ink anyways. Is it really worth going through excruciating pain (that can actually deaden the sensation of sexual intercourse) to piss your parents off forever? It’s not.