YOU’VE BEEN DREAMING about it for months. You’ve picked out your design, saved your money and booked your appointment. Lurking in the back of your brain is the age-old question: ‘What will my mum/dad/granny/boss say?’

Does that still happen? Or have tattoos gone mainstream, and anything, any place goes? Can you walk into a job as a corporate lawyer with a tattoo on the back of your hand? Can you work as a GP with a snake on the side of your neck? Can you show your tattoo to your grandmother?’

The answer to these examples is maybe, maybe not. For some more traditional environments, tattoos are still associated with gangs, sailors and undesirables. Some employers still hesitate to employ workers with highly visible tattoos.

In recent decades, the stigma of wearing a tattoo has definitely plummeted, with many workplaces encouraging people to ‘express themselves’. Tattoos have gone mainstream for young people in the last decade, with over a third (35%) of Irish people reported to have a tattoo in 2019, and the average number of tattoos per person is two.

Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

A US Pew Research survey (2023) found similar numbers with nearly one-third (32%) of adults having a tattoo, including more than half of women aged 18 to 49, and over a fifth of adults (22%) having more than one tattoo — numbers that have skyrocketed in recent years.

Social media has accelerated the trend, and new trends, including fine lines on the hands and the back of the arms, have exploded among Generation Z.

The earliest tattoo is reported to have been found on the body of Ötzi the Iceman, the natural mummy of a man who lived between 3,350 and 3,105 BC, whose remains were discovered in the Ötza Alps on the Austrian-Italy border in 1991. He was found to have........

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