The Tattoo World Continues To Ramp Up

I've taken a few months to dive into research about everything related to tattoos and those of us who are part of this world. The numbers are nothing less than amazing.

More than 35% of the US population has at least one tattoo. This is up from 24% in 2006. Just two years and more than a 1000% increase in popularity. What does this mean? Please.....I'm not even thinking about taking another two months off to dig into that subject. Here's what's important....

Enjoy yourself in the pursuit of being yourself. If you have been inked and pierced and laced....we'll chat about that in the future....just enjoy yourself in the pursuit of .... let's call it artistic expression. For some of us it's about rebelling against everything that's conservative and just basically un-cool and boring.

Life is too long to go around wanting to do something that's as completely personal as getting a tattoo or having a piercing or two installed on your own body, but hesitating because of the fear of what people will say or think about it.

People of the world....get a grip. There's lots more important stuff going on in the world for you to focus on....

Ciao,
Doc Rich

PS Click on the banner and take a look at my newest tattoo blog... Hot To Tattoo.com

The Tattoo World Gets Bigger Every Month

According to the popular search engines, especially Lycos, "Tattoos" was the third most popular search term of every other category. It tends to rank 4th to 7th place for the most popular search term every month of the year.

"Tattoo and tattoos" is one of only seven search terms to never fall out of the Top 50 Search terms in the 1000 or so weeks since Lycos has been keeping track. The other six are Dragon Ball, Pamela Anderson, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, Las Vegas and the WWE/WWF.

*In July of 2002 "tattoos" reached its highest ranking ever, coming in as the number two most requested search term on the internet. "Tattoos" was requested more often than Britney Spears, marijuana or Kazaa, illustrating that skin ink is more popular than "sex, drugs and rock n' roll!"

Lycos dropped the term "tattoos" from it's Poll because the term was so popular. According to Lycos, tattoos rarely drops out of the top ten search terms requested on the Internet and Lycos dropped the term because they wanted to make room for other searches.

Ask.com found these stats about tattoo searches:

LA fashion week reminds us once again that trends come and go. But,
while the Devil may wear Prada, Search Engine Ask.com reveals that tattoos
have been stealing the scene as the #1 searched beauty term since 2003. No
longer taboo, the popularity of tattoos prove that skin is always in.

-- Virtually every language is searched for in tattoo designs: from Aztec
sayings to Russian phrases, but Japanese and Chinese characters/symbols
are among the most frequently searched.

-- Location, location, location: Backs rank the highest in searches
(lower, upper and all over). But, not far behind: necks, arms, wrists
and ankles. Unmentionables also rank high.

-- Angelina's number, choice and types of tattoos rank the highest in the
celebrity category. Ask.com searchers are also intrigued by other
celebs. Most notably, Nicole Richie, Alyssa Milano and heavy metal
rockers Metallica.

-- As for who searches for tattoos more: given the top five ranked
designs, which are tribal, cross, stars, butterflies and fairies, we'd
say women.