Decorating yourself is a pretty standard human thing to do, we've been doing that for millennia, one way or another. It's literally 'making yourself more interesting' in the purely aesthetic sense.
I think we are rightly suspicious of the idea that it makes you a more interesting person.
I'm not sure it's about fitting in though, although I guess it is when gangs and things all have an identifying tattoo. I think it's just that it's become culturally mainstream, so we see it everywhere and so we start to think about doing it ourselves.
There was a time when seeing a tattoo on a person on TV or wherever told you something about that person. Usually it was something negative, like they had been in prison or were social 'outsiders'. Outsider culture always gets appropriated by the mainstream which likes the idea of outsiderdom but doesn't have the resilience for it. So the superficial trappings get swallowed up and regurgitated until they have no meaning at all.
That's where we are right now. Pop stars have tattoos. Primary school teachers have tattoos. There's a guy who works at my local Tesco who has his entire head tattooed. Not long ago that would have had a meaning. The meaning would probably have been "Don't f*ck with me, can't you see how little I give a sh*t?" Now it doesn't mean anything, he's just a very pleasant and helpful guy who happens to have tattoos all over his head.
What I'm trying to get at is, if you want a tattoo on your arm, get one. It doesn't mean anything. It's not even a statement of conformity to anything any more. It's just one of many ways we can decorate ourselves.
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