Tattoos: a Bad Idea or a Sexy Hobby?

June 12, 2014
COLEEN-AND-DAN-SINGER

by Coleen Singer at Sssh.com

So, this guy decided to sell space on his face for advertising internet porn websites. Sounds reasonable, right? Just stick a new ad on there every week or so, rotate them, take photos, promote internet porn, make money being a human billboard, everybody wins, right?

Well, no. Not when you get the ads TATTOOED on your face.

Billy Gibby, also known as “Billy the Billboard” before legally changing his name to “Hostgator Dotcom” started renting (selling? leasing?) small portions of his face for adspace a few years ago, and some of the logos and ads are for internet porn sites.

Gibby, who has bipolar disorder, says he now deeply regrets his decision and is selling additional tattoo advertising space on his body to help pay for laser removal surgery to get rid of the facial tattoos. (Yes, there is no small amount of irony and quite a bit of bad logic going on there).

He originally made the decision to sell permanent ad space on his face because he was anxious about making enough money to support his family of seven. But having a face covered in tattoos makes it hard to become gainfully employed. What a conundrum! hence, the decision to get even more tattoo advertising, on his arms and legs and who knows where else.

Although Gibby was willing to have porn websites tattooed on his face, he does have standards. He won’t endorse any entities that are racist, and refuses to do anything political. Too bad, there seems to be a precedent for tattooed politicians, like this guy whose head is one big potato-shaped tattoo, who ran for president of the Czech Republic last year.

Tattoos and pornography are not exactly strangers; go ahead, type “porn tattoo” or ‘tattoo porn” into your search engine. Go ahead, I’ll wait…Okay, overwhelmed? Here’s a good one to get you started: The top 25 hottest tattooed pornstars. (All women of course; and some of the tattoos are very subtle, which I wanted to warn you about in case you are disappointed.)

But the love of tattooed bodies is a fetish with a long history. The carnival “freak show” which more or less disappeared at mid-century seems to be making a comeback in the cultural underground, and modern primitives who cover their bodies with tattoos, piercings and brandings are happy to cover themselves with markings and endure the pain to turn their bodies in works of art. Some say it’s a return to tribalism (which, frankly, American culture never really had; the only tribal status this country originated with the Americans who were here before the rest of us).

Body modification is an art form many of us enjoy looking at (there is no shortage of tattoo imagery online, like this gallery of full body tattoos), even if we wouldn’t consider doing it to ourselves. Hey, one tattoo of a Chinese character meaning “sassy” on our left calf or a tasteful rainbow unicorn on our shoulder is enough for most of us. We also wonder if having too many tattoos might make us unemployable, scary to the opposite sex, or just plain outcast from society. Maybe you dress up in steampunk gear every other Saturday, but you look like a mild-mannered corporate geek in chinos and a polo shirt during your 9 to 5 work week. But consider: tattooed folks get their freak on 24-7, even when their ink isn’t visible because it’s covered by their clothes. There must be a kind of thrill there, knowing that beautiful or shocking body art can be revealed with the quick toss of a shirt. It’s like they’re secret super-heroes, ready to shock and amaze with their powers of elaborate ink art, only instead of putting on their super-hero costumes, they take off their mundane one to reveal the superior being beneath.

Tattoos most definitely aren’t clothing; they’re permanent, can be expensive (if you choose complicated designs or color work), and are usually fairly painful to get, unless you like that sort of thing, and some tattoo enthusiasts say the resulting endorphin rush can be addictive. In fact, the endorphin release many people experience during a session of tattooing is similar to ones received via exercise and sex. So there ya go!