2008 Woodie Awards
By Lauren Kawam
Issue date: 1/31/08 Section: Daily Buzz
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You chill at you friends house, play some intense games of beer pong and then get bored. What's next? You head over to your neighborhood tattoo shop to get inked up.
You figure now is the prime time to become a statistic: 1 in 4 Americans have tattoos, according to American Academy of Dermatology.
You almost wuss out, but your friends egg you on - you give into temptation. You choose something you'll probably regret in the morning, but your safety buzz has a tight hold on you so you don't care or even realize what you're about to do.
You wake up the next morning with some highly embarrassing ink on some highly offensive place - if it were to be flashed in public - and all you can think is, "How drunk was I last night?"
But, not to worry because you were tattooed with the newest, "biocompatible" ink that, if desired, breaks down with one zap of a laser, right? The ink is made by storing dye in tiny, biodegradable plastic capsules that break down under laser light. When they break down, the ink is then carried away by the bloodstream and, voila, tattoo be gone.
Freedom-2 ink is marketed as being able to produce "high quality art" with "effective, less painful, lower cost removability."
The website says that the Freedom-2 ink is just like any other tattoo ink with the intention of permanence. However, it is "engineered for effective laser therapy removal," leaving your skin clear as a baby's bottom. Until you get another tattoo, of course.
Unfortunately, Freedom-2 ink costs considerably more because of what's in it and is only being tested in a few states at the moment, so you may want to hold out for a little while before inking up.
As far as removal goes, depending on the size and intensity of color, a regular tattoo can take as many as 15 laser treatments to get it fully removed. The Freedom-2 ink tattoo removal takes a single laser treatment, which would break apart the biomaterial within the ink, says the website.
But, isn't the reason behind getting a tattoo to have it forever, something you'd want always? Isn't it a voluntary procedure that you endure in order to undergo some sort of modification or internal evolution, other than the obvious external changes? Some would say that it seems like this new removable ink defeats the purpose of getting the tattoo in the first place.
Now, if you do get something that eventually you realize was a stupid idea, you can get it erased.
This now means that thinking before inking is a thing of the past. It seems as if a new tattooing era is upon us. Living with no regrets has a whole new meaning from here on out.
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