Let's put the "tattoo" back in "tattoo model."
Dear Instagram,
I really like what you've been doing in recent years (although the whole "stories" thing still seems stolen from Snapchat), but we really need to talk about something.
See, the tattoo industry kind of revolves around you these days. You make it a million times easier for clients and artists to find each other, and tattooers can now see the work of others from all around the world just by scrolling through their phone. For artistic purposes, you (and sometimes Facebook) have really made the 2010s the golden age of tattooing. What a time to be alive, right?
As anyone who uses you undoubtedly already knows, tattoos are more popular and accepted now than they ever have been before. No longer is ink confined to bikers, rock stars, and other nonconforming outlaws. It's not uncommon to see a fully sleeved teacher or a cop with a back piece. It's also obvious that the popularity and "coolness" has led to more people getting heavily tattooed without really thinking twice about it, and being tattooed is now no more rebellious than smoking cigarettes or buying a t-shirt from Hot Topic.
At the same time, your accessibility and the popularity of tattooing has given rise to a group of people who never existed before: "tattoo models." Now, there's nothing innately wrong about being a "tattoo model," and there are plenty of companies and publications that fund and rely on them for content and advertising, but we have to draw the line somewhere.
