I ate a firefly once

"Scientists found link between tattoos and heavy drinking"

madelineufeld:

While attempting to keep my exasperated rage at bay, I must say the following:

1. Interview tattooed subjects at a bar about their drinking habits and you are likely to find that the subjects drink.  Interview tattooed subjects at a church and you are likely to find that the subjects participate in organized religion.  Interview tattooed subjects at a salon or barbershop and you are likely to find that the subjects have hair.  This is neither a revelation nor evidence of anything.

2. Conclusions are being drawn on the basis that a 21-year-old female with a butterfly tattoo on her lower back and a diamond in her belly button accurately represents the population of “tattooed and pierced people” in society.  The fact of the matter is, she might just get the most free shots of anyone in the bar that night - but when she wakes up hungover the next day and goes out into the world, the only appearance-related judgments she’ll receive will come in the form of whistles on the crosswalk.  Tattoos and piercings aren’t exclusive anymore, and many of the people whose lifestyles were considered in the collection of these statistics wouldn’t be deemed by anybody - including themselves, I daresay - as being particularly involved in body modification, nor representative of those who are.  When researchers state that we should be on the look-out for “high-risk” people sporting piercings and tattoos, they want us to seek out full-sleeve artwork and bridge piercings… not script on ankles, or earlobe studs.

3. Keeping in mind the suggestion being made is that tattooed and pierced people have the worst drinking habits, one should note that barely a quarter of the people frequenting these bars had “body art” of any kind.  People who are not tattooed or pierced, and are therefore considered to be of “lower risk” to society, make up seventy-two percent of all the people in the surveyed establishments.  Let me be more plain: if this sampling is large enough and thorough enough to make the statements it does, then it also fair to conclude that the vast majority of all bar-drinkers do not participate in body modification. Plainer still: drinkers are drinkers, and most drinkers don’t have piercings or tattoos.

So what are we to gather is the real issue?  Is it how people drink, or how people look?  First and foremost, this research makes the suggestion that risk in society is based on the extent to which a population consumes alcohol; the more heavily our drinkers drink, the more we should all be on alert.  Under its breath, however, the research reveals that more people who drink don’t exhibit those “markers” of the high-risk tendencies being examined at all.  
Has anyone looked into the fraction of the population that doesn’t consume any alcohol?  You could fit us on the head of a pin, and I assure you you’d find body modifications among us.  You’d find tattoos in honor of sobriety; you’d find more pride in an abstinent lifestyle than any one of those 2000 in the bars could claim to have in anything.  And you’d search high and low for that disastrous, uncontrollable risk we present and you’d find instead that we’re a pretty minor fucking threat.

Like no terrorist in a turban represents the whole of the Middle East, no drunken jerk with a tribal armband can speak for the tattooed people of the world.  It’s an archaic way of thinking, and one in the name of which far too many wars have been fought.
Perhaps we could move forward as a civilization if we looked to the heart of our problems rather than constantly seeking a minority that will serve as a suitable scapegoat.

Nonetheless, I look forward to the Agence France-Presse’s follow-up about women, black people, and the disabled.

Fucking disgusted.

I like the way your brain works, Madeline.