I’m from the US. Tattoos have become so common and mainstream that I swear I see more people with one than without. In fact, theres a good chance that if you run into someone who doesn’t seem to have tattoos, they might actually have some that are
actually underneath their clothes. Sometimes I feel like I’m in the minority now as I personally don’t have any tattoos.
Tattoos are not limited to any single demographic either. You’ll see people with tattoos in all careers and walks of life now. That’s being said, they are still more common in certain people than others.
Tattoos are most common amongst younger people, people in artsy fields, people with social jobs such as bartenders, entertainers especially musicians, and people in the creative industry such as models. While tattoos don’t have this criminal association anymore, criminals and people who are more likely to break the law also commonly have tattoos. You can watch any cop show in the US and will notice the majority of people being arrested or doing something wrong always seem to have tats.
On people less likely to have tattoos. College students, older people, people in professional job fields, and people who come from conservative family backgrounds are a few of the notable examples.
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There’s a notable difference between people who have tattoos in visible places like their forearms, hands, neck or face, and people who have tattoos in non visible placed like the back, sides or upper legs.
Among younger generations tattoos are very common. Even if it’s just a single small one, I know A LOT of people with tattoos. Older generations tend to have them in less visible places, but even then I know quite a few. Heck, even my boss has full arm and leg sleeves but since he’s wearing long armed shirts even in summer you never see them.
Artsy folks, like artists or musicians as well as people in labour jobs like mechanics, electricians, bricklayers, craftsman etc. tend to have more, and more visible, tattoos. (Same goes for piercings and/or unnaturally coloured hair btw.)
Office workers, government officials, police or customs officers as well as people in most business and sales fields rarely have tattoos that you can see.
The stigma agains tattoos isnt very noticable in most professions tho. Sure, if you work as a financian advisor you’ll have a hard time finding a job when you have visible tattoos or piercings, but in general it’s getting more acceptable. Especially when you compare it to like, 30 years ago.
A lot of young people have tattoos, personally I’ll never get any but it seems that an awful lot of people my age are getting tattooed. They’re far from being in the majority but like it’s a growing number of people in my place at least. They’re not specifically common among people in artsy fields or people in social jobs as those you stated. They’re just regular people that study in university or work other normal jobs…
Big bald muscular men – favorite stereotype of my father, he thinks all of them are criminals, although from my experience it’s usually true.
Metal heads – always have some. Sister and cousin both have several tattoos.
Random people – like some Chinese characters on the back of the neck used to be popular decade ago(amongst college “kids”). Pizza delivery lady(she delivered pizza to me like a week ago) had a lot of tattoos, like whole arms and probably even more under clothes. And I can go on…
Although usually people tend to hide them(so you can’t really tell usually), especially at work. Boomers in general tend to hate them with passion.
I dislike tattoos, but won’t hate others for having them.
Anyway some American stereotypes like those fat old biker dudes with lot of tattoos and car mechanics having tattoos everywhere(like seriously in every show I watched, they were like copy pasted – lot of tattoos, longer hair/bald, bandana and beard lol) are not really a thing here.