Wow, that's a lot of judgemental negative responses, I wouldn't have expected so much here and find it quite hard to read actually.
I am one of those rare people that grew up at a time when everyone started getting their ears pierced and I never did, never saw the point and always thought things dangling from holes in my ears was a danger when I spent so much time around animals and doing physical activities that risked them being ripped.
That said, I got my first tattoo in my early 40s, a phoenix, at the time I took voluntary redundancy from a well paid successful career after multiple bereavements left me in a complete state of despair and feeling I wasn't earning my salary or interested in my work any more and that life had pretty much come to a turning point or an end and I wanted it to be the former so put my determination into the process of taking on the pain and making something of it, quite literally a new life. If that is self harm or monstrous mutilation, that's your judgement. To me it was the alternative to far worse things and a statement of intent that kept me focused on being committed to starting over and not giving up. it's on my lower leg and ankle, trailing down onto the top and side of my foot and yes the foot part hurt more than I realised it would, but the rest was ok and I have no regrets.
Actually since life has gone that way again in recent months, I've started a new tattoo, a tree. It looks dreadful right now as I can't afford a session very often and may take a year to complete at this rate, but that's ok too. I don't care what people think of my body as a result of having a tattoo when I have been convinced all my life that my body is disgusting in any case, it makes no difference whatever if people don't understand what I'm doing or why I want to "disfigure myself". I gave up smoking when I realised that for me it was a form of self harm and slow suicide - this doesn't feel the same at all, quite the reverse.
Maybe there are worse things to do than take charge of what is done to ones body for the first time in ones life perhaps, and choose something at times of great significance to remind and represent the things that truly matter when so much else is all around underlining how bad, ugly, wrong, miserably unworthy you are to the majority of society. I looked a long time before starting and found, both times, someone I trusted with the skills and the vision to create on my skin something I will live and die with. So if you're going for it, don't choose lightly or by criteria that matter less to your long term satisfaction than how cheaply or quickly it can be shown off.
And yes in some jobs there are still people who will judge by appearance not by deeper meaning, so decide whether that matters and where to put your tattoo. More and more folk have something or are thinking of it but not done so due to fear or pain or whatever issues leave them undecided, so it's less of a stigma than it was, but I'm told the rib cage is the most painful area so the most hidden might not be the least often uncovered!
