Tattoo blues: What happens to your skin art as you age?

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Tattoo blues: What happens to your skin art as you age?
September 20, 2011
By Angela Hill
Health & Fitness

So there you are, getting a tattoo. The needle's buzzing, you've chosen a meaningful image. You've made peace with the permanence, and it's all well and good.

Just keep in mind: No matter how young you are, you are painting on a deteriorating canvas.

"The sun turns grapes into raisins, and plums into prunes, so you can bet it does the same to your skin. Have you ever looked at a farmer's neck?" asks legendary inking icon Lyle Tuttle, who opened his first tattoo shop in San Francisco in 1960 and has placed enduring images on the likes of Janis Joplin, Cher and Peter Fonda. "Tattoos become part of your skin, and your skin is deteriorating from the get-go, so get ready for that," he says.

And Tuttle knows -- about body art and aging to boot. Not only is he covered toe-to-neck, wrist-to-wrist with personal designs ("stickers on my luggage," he calls them), but he turns 80 in October, still making public appearances and giving seminars on tattooing. And still getting more tattoos.

"They have to be really small doodads now," he said, chuckling over the phone last week from his home in Ukiah. "I got my first tattoo when I was 14 and kept going. So I don't have much space left now that I'm this old."

Indeed, people often view body art as the domain of the young, the terrain of the artsy, urban and dangerous. But now that tattoos have become run-of-the-bicep -- roughly 45 million people in the United States have at least one tattoo,
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according to estimates by the FDA -- and as more of those original young "dangerous" types attain seniority, it's not uncommon to see grandparents, great-grandparents and beyond with intricate masterpieces on the anatomy. Perhaps a three-headed dragon scaling a calf at a family picnic, or an indelible winged skull peeking out from a shirt collar at the senior center.

That's totally cool, and while a design's longevity depends on ink technology, lifestyles and skin types, it's not always a pretty picture when your epidermis sags or crinkles in crucial locations, causing once beautiful butterflies to morph into Mothra, or bold biker tats to fade to baby blue.

"Sunscreen! Use it on your tattoos!" asserts Jean Chen, who says she pounds that advice into her clients at Diving Swallow, a cooperative of women tattoo artists in Oakland. "You have to take care of your skin. As your skin ages, so do your tattoos. Keep your ink out of the sun," she says.

"Really fair, freckled types that easily burn are not so good for tattoos in the first place," Tuttle says. "I see tattoos that I put on people 50 years ago and -- woo-hoo -- you can't hardly tell what it is. Then I'll see ones from the same time that look like they did the day I put 'em on."

Some people don't mind if their artwork fades or changes, however. They feel the tattoos have become part of their identities, part of their very beings. So as they age, the tats should too.

Kushala, 69, of Berkeley, has intricate designs all over his body -- even on his face, running down the bridge of his nose and circling up onto his cheeks where gray whiskers poke through the once-black, now denim-blue swirls.

"My tattoos are primarily spiritually, religious based in relation to my belief systems," he says. "Some of mine have faded somewhat, but that's what happens. It's part of the natural process."

Freddy Corbin, a world-renowned tattoo artist in his 40s and owner of Temple Tattoo in Oakland, says he actually likes the look of tattoos as they age.

"I'm covered in tattoos. But when I go someplace like Hawaii, I don't put sunblock on," he said. "I think aged tattoos look more like part of your skin than just something sitting on top of it."

Location, location

There's only so much you can do about the natural aging process, artists say, but image placement certainly can be taken into consideration. Especially for women.

"If you're a woman and you're thinking about having kids, don't get tattooed on your belly," says Chen, 37. "Some women's tattoos will stretch and shrink back without getting distorted, but others aren't so lucky. I've seen women with stretch marks running through their tattoo. Yikes!"

Corbin goes so far as to say women should get tattooed differently from men. Unless a woman is going for a full Japanese bodysuit type of artwork, it's best to avoid areas on breasts, the stomach and certain parts of the leg, he says.

"Not even so much for aging reasons, but just aesthetically," he said. "Certain parts just look weird with tattoos, like tattoos on a boob. Some parts are just right the way God made them."

Never too old

Not only are people who got tattooed in their youth getting older, but older people are getting tattoos. Anthony Leandro, 69, of Berkeley says he didn't start in earnest until he was 65. Then, he went crazy with it.

"First one was when George W. got into office," he said. "Had one tattooed on my back that said, 'Everything's going to (expletive).' "

Now Leandro has a colorful rose blooming through the gray hairs on his neck, not to mention a commemoration of his birthplace ("Bronx NY") on his right forearm, a self-designed skull-and-cannon pirate motif on his chest and even his birth date on the other arm.

"I'm getting' old, so I don't want to forget that stuff," he says.

"I've been seeing a lot of older people getting tattoos," Corbin says. "There's the growing acceptance, plus older people start doing stuff they always wanted to do but couldn't for whatever reason."

And with so many younger people getting body art on a regular basis, there surely will be lots of inked old folks in the coming years.

"It's gonna be interesting to see what the next generation thinks of all these older people tattooed," Corbin says, laughing. "They'll probably roll their eyes and say, 'Oh Mom, that's so uncool.' "

Tattoo regret

While most people likely step into a tattoo parlor fully aware of the permanent nature of the art, some come to have regrets, most often because of choosing a design with the name of a now-ex lover. Such romantic decisions gone wrong have made for a bustling tattoo-removal business.

Dr. John Tang at the Rejuve clinic in Saratoga says he sees dozens of clients for laser tattoo removal -- mostly those with someone's name, or because they're going into the military.

"We actually see very few people wanting to remove tattoos for aging reasons," he said. "Tattoos will fade, but if people like them, then they're attached to them. Quite literally. And the removal process can take up to a year of multiple treatments. So you have to really hate a tattoo to want to get it removed."

Berkeley's Kushala thinks removal is just wrong anyway.

"Personally, I think it flies in the face of the purpose of tattoos to begin with -- their sense of permanency, displaying a representation of something that looms large in your life," he said. "Now people say, 'Oh, I can get it removed if I change my mind.' The idea of impermanence is so pervasive in our society."