It's a little thing, but it pisses me off: this article on the UK's Daily Mail website by Liz Jones, trashing women who get tattoos. Not men, of course--just women.
The title is "Why DO women get these tramp stamps?" To me, a "tramp stamp" is a tattoo on someone's low, low lower back that's visible when they bend over in crop-tops and ultra low-rise jeans. But to this writer, all tattoos--on women--are "tramp stamps". The entire tone of the article can be summed up by this quote:
"They are a mark of temporary insanity,
instantly turning the classiest, chicest
woman into trailer trash. ... Yes, I am
talking about tattoos, the most tasteless,
tacky, tawdry, terrible plague to infect our
nation since mad cow disease."
This article wouldn't bother me so much if the author took issue with tattoos on anybody. Some people just don't like them, and that's fine. Even in that context, her vehemence is a little off-putting--does she freak out about multiple piercings, too? (That reminds me I need to put earrings in.) Probably, considering she refers to the residents of Hoxton (an artsy area of London, from what I can gather) as "half-wits". How dare they be different!
But the fact that this article trashes exclusively women is just infuriating. She does mention three men: Winston Churchill, Johnny Depp, and David Beckham. Churchill, of course, she merely states that you "may be surprised" to know that he had an anchor on his arm. Depp and Beckham she trashes for their type of tattoo ("Winona Forever"), not the practice of tattooing.
No judgment, no trashing. No, she saves that exclusively for women, calling them trashy, "desperate" to fit in, and whining about how their tats aren't going to "look good" when they're old. All in all, it's just another way of bitching about women not conforming to a societal standard of uniformity and beauty. I bet if I read all her articles, I'd find plenty of bitching about ZOMG FATTIES, too.
The worst part, though, is at the end of the article, where she attempts to give her point a "message". She does this by talking about her friend's grandmother, who has a prisoner ID tattoo from the Holocaust. This tack-on at the end of the article serves no purpose other than to try to give the author's ridiculous intolerance a veneer of righteousness. Exploiting the death and suffering of millions to shore up your hatred of something as ridiculous as body art? Now that's trashy.
(In skimming some other articles, I've discovered Liz Jones apparently also hates people who eat meat and dairy products, and people who have more than one child. And oh, yep, there's the fat hate, complete with a picture of a "fat" girl eating chips, ice cream, and candy. Why am I not surprised.)
