My back canvas of sacred body art

An article written by Jeremy Taylor for http://www.asylum.com expounded on an interesting fact that I shared in my book, Spiritual Skin. Here’s what he had to say:

18-to-29-year-olds (aka “millennials” or “Generation Y”) lead the nation in getting tattoos.

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 38 percent of “millennials” have at least one tattoo. While that isn’t a huge increase over the 32 percent of 30-to-46-year-olds who have body art — only about 10 percent of those over 46 have a tat — what differentiates the younger generation is how many tattoos they get.

50 percent of all inked millennials have more than one tattoo, and 18 percent have more than five. Among 30-to-46-year-olds with a tattoo, half only sport one; only 9 percent have more than five. 

Given that millennials still have many more years of questionable decisions in front of them, for some 18-to-29-year-olds, it could be a case of their amount of bare skin being the limit.

However, through my experiences and work as a sacred tattoo designer, I am seeing a rise in this generation, as well as others, in the increase of intentful, spiritual and symbolic sacred body art as well. So while Jeremy makes what I feel to be an unfair assessment, in stating that this generation of millennials have years of “questionable decisions”  that may only be about filling up the amount of bare skin they have, I’m pleased to see the word “questionable” replaced with “conscious” in terms of the decisions they are evolving into.