A rise in tattoo removal procedures might actually mean a rise in revenue for tattoo parlors. Plenty of people will remove an old tattoo or one they don’t like anymore so that they can get a new one in its place.
Body Electric Tattoo is home to tattoo artist Cary Kandarian. “Every day is kind of crazy, you know, every tattoo is crazy,” says Kandarian. He just gave 20-year-old Nathan his fifteenth tattoo. It’s a skull with the words Los Angeles.
“I love LA,” says Nathan, “It’s cool, I’ve only been here a couple of weeks and, it’s all good.”
Not every client takes tattooing as casually as Nathan. And lots of folks who have gotten tattoos would like to take them off. The old methods of eliminating tattoos, according to a laser tattoo employee named Kirby, really don’t appear pleasurable.
“People would blast your tattoo off like a bazooka and leave a horrible scar. Other choices for tattoo removal are dermabrasion which is like scrubbing it away with a wire brush, excision which is cutting it off and stitching your skin together again, you tend to have a scar that way.”
Kirby says laser treatment eliminates tattoos without damaging your skin. “If you think of a pigment particle just like a pebble under your skin and your body doesn’t want that pigment particle there because it’s a foreign body but it’s a marble its too large for your body to get rid of. The laser comes in and it operates like a hammer to break that pebble into a million different pieces that are really small, and now they’re small enough for your body to get rid of.”
Last year, the clinic Kirby works at did fourteen thousand tattoo removal treatments. The youngest client was only fourteen and the oldest eighty-seven. The typical person was a woman between eighteen and thirty-four. Whether it was somebody fresh out of jail, a USC undergraduate, or even a customer who actually got their tattoo several hours earlier, Kirby said all of them had something in common – these people wanted a fresh start.
“It’s more than getting a haircut, it’s more than getting your nails done, it’s more than getting a new apartment, it’s a brand new lease on life, it makes you feel like a new person,” says Kirby. “We’ve seen ex-lovers names, fraternity letters, and the ever-so-trendy barbed wire tattoos every day. Some tattoos, however, are more extreme than others.”
“I’m a big Willie Nelson fan, I’ve been to Lukenback, Texas, and I have seen Willie Nelson’s face on a woman’s private parts where her pubic hair is Willie Nelson’s beard.”
Where the tattoo is on your body as well as what kind and color of ink used all can determine how easily a tattoo can be taken off. The closer the tattoo is to one’s heart, the easier it can be to remove since there is more blood circulation. And lots of folks will clear up an area of skin so that they can have another tattoo put in its place. More business for tattoo removal companies may well lead to more business for tattoo parlors.